Gianmaria Testa
Born near Cuneo (in Italy’s Piedmont region) into a family of farmers , Gianmaria Testa taught himself to play guitar and wrote his first songs as soon as he learned his first chords. Following winning the first prize at the Recanati Festival for emerging singer-songwriters, he released his first CD, Montgolfières, on Label Bleu (1995).
Gianmaria’s warm, dusky voice tells stories of wind and memories, earth and fog, objects that soar from one horizon to another and ladies in train stations (“Donne nelle stazioni”) who head off on someone else’s arm without looking back. His music is personal and richly melodic, flecked with accents of tango, bossa nova, habañera and jazz, but as spare and essential as a pencil sketch, imparting great beauty with simplicity and directness.
On the heels of Montgolfière’s superb reviews, Gianmaria made his February 1996 début at Paris’s New Morning. He showed himself to be an artist of great presence, communicating the joy of making.
His second album, Extra-muros, was released in 1996 on Tôt ou Tard, Warner France’s new label devoted to songwriters. His voice seemed to have gained new richness and depth, and there was a new freedom to the instrumental playing. The driving rhythms of jazz, lively fanfares, piano solos, sudden silences: they all served to emphasize Gianmaria’s sincerity and his subtle, elegant way of telling tales of melancholy and quiet joy.
In February 1997, five months after the release of Extra-muros, Gianmaria performed at the legendary Olympia in Paris. The engagement marked a key moment in his young career, which, in the space of two years, saw him go from being a completely unknown Italian singer-songwriter to making a chance début in France to becoming a runaway success. Still, those familiar with his CDs and live appearances couldn’t help but note the composure, confidence, sincerity and utter lack of self-importance with which he made these enormous strides.
Thanks to his appearance at the Olympia, the Italian press finally began to take note of Gianmaria: critics were first surprised, then unanimous in hailing this important new voice in the Italian singer?songwriter tradition. In subsequent months, Gianmaria undertook tours in France, Italy, Portugal, and Canada: roughly a hundred dates.
In February 1999 Gianmaria released his third CD: Lampo (Tôt ou Tard), recorded in Italy and France. The title alludes to both lightening and the flash of a camera: a luminous instant, short-lived, but leaving an indelible trace in one’s memory. Lampo is a disc of micro-stories, of everyday people and things that take on surprising dimensions: lovers in Rome, the moon, chestnut trees, chalk dust left on doorsteps to mark the steps of visitors... Once again, critics were unanimous in welcoming a magnificent album, alive with a quiet, gentle swing, seemingly suspended in a dimension outside of time, “lunar” and earthy at the same time.
On October 2000, he made a new CD of songs and poems, Il valzer di un giorno. The CD represented a real gamble: solo voice backed up with acoustic guitar, relying solely on the quality of the material. It was a huge success. Following the release of Il valzer di un giorno, Gianmaria played Italy’s most prestigious theatres as well as other European cities. To date, this album has reached platinum status.
Other 2001 highlights included an evening dedicated to Nobel Prize winner José Saramago; and a concert?show in celebration of Fred Buscaglione, Guarda che luna!, The latter was chosen to open the 2002 Umbria Jazz Festival and also toured throughout 2002-03. Along with Roberto Cipelli and Paolo Fresu, and with the participation of Attilio Zanchi and Gianni Cazzola, Gianmaria created Omaggio a Leo Ferrè in 2002. That same year saw the worldwide re-release of Montgolfières by Harmonia Mundi in deluxe CD-book packaging.
Gianmaria’s latest album, Altre latitudini (Le Chant du Monde/Harmonia Mundi) was released in October 2003 in Europe and Canada. Its January 2004 United States release won a rave review in Time Out New York and extensive airplay on WNYC. The “latitudes” of the title are those of the heart, explored in fourteen songs of love lost and found. This is an album of maturity: of his voice, more expressive than ever; of his texts, still sober, essential, and evocative; and of his music, with ever more distinctive melodies.
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