Avion Travel - The adventures of the little orchestra

They spent years playing in small clubs and theatres before breaking through, even managing to win Sanremo. And they managed to move effortlessly from the no wave of Arto Lindsay to the most classic Italian melodies, without ever selling their soul to the devil and without ever losing their humility as craftsmen of song. It really is a strange case, that of Piccola Orchestra Avion Travel, one of the few Italian bands able to build songs with real skill, music capable of withstanding the wear of time.

Born in Caserta at the dawn of the Eighties, at the start of one of the many rock revolutions the Italian record industry never managed to grasp in time, Avion Travel, as they were called back then, seemed destined to vanish after a handful of not-too-successful albums. And yet their music already hinted at a talent that was anything but ordinary.

After a decidedly rock debut and a shift towards pop in the second half of the Eighties (the band won the rock section of the 1987 Sanremo Festival), Piccola Orchestra crowned its journey of curious, independent exploration with Bellosguardo, released in 1992. An album that, through its distinctiveness and concentrated beauty, effectively stands as the band's musical manifesto and marks the start of the current musical adventure of the six Campanian musicians. An adventure the group shares with new travelling companions, among them Lilli Greco (already an artistic collaborator of Paolo Conte, Francesco De Gregori, Antonello Venditti and Gianni Morandi), a master of creative dedication who helps and pushes the group to engage with neighbouring fields of performance such as film and theatre, while also strengthening their live-performance skills.

In 1993, following their meeting with Caterina Caselli and the signing of a deal with Sugar, came the album Opplà, a decisive piece in the refined musical mosaic of Avion Travel, which received good reviews from critics and began to open the doors of success to the band. In October 1995 came Finalmente Fiori, which proved to be the natural conclusion of the trilogy begun a year earlier with Bellosguardo.

Their need to keep moving creatively led them to discover new expressive territories: thus was born "The war seen from the moon", a one-act musical piece that involved actor Fabrizio Bentivoglio, who would prove to be a loyal working and travelling companion. "La guerra vista dalla luna" was staged in 1996 and was performed, with great success, in all the major Italian theatres over the following years.

In the summer of '97, Avion Travel toured Italy and abroad, especially in France, Portugal, Luxembourg and Germany, where the band from Caserta had by then won over a sizeable following. This intense concert activity (more than 200 shows in two years) eventually gave rise to their first live album, Living on songs.

At the 1998 Sanremo Festival, Piccola Orchestra presented the song "Dormi e sogna" in the "Big" section, which won the prestigious Critics' Award and the Quality Jury Prize (chaired by English composer Michael Nyman), for best music and best arrangement.

In January 1999 came the album Cirano, produced by Arto Lindsay, one of the fathers of New York's no wave scene alongside Sonic Youth and Lydia Lunch, an unorthodox musician who had been active in the Eighties in numerous rock-jazz outfits and already had landmark collaborations to his name with David Byrne, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Caetano Veloso and Marisa Monte. An intellectually combative figure, who drew Avion Travel into a new game: that of pairing Peppe Servillo's harmony and bel canto with electric guitars and keyboards treated in his own distinctive way. It is thanks to this work that, after touring the major Italian theatres and squares, La Piccola Orchestra Avion Travel landed in Europe and played numerous shows in theatres across Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland and Spain.

Peppe Servillo, more than a leader, is the "face" of this group of musicians, a man who dresses the songs in his facial expressions and his rubbery features, while at the same time delivering lyrics with real poetic feeling. "The arc of the songs on this record is the same as that of Cyrano's letters," he observes. "They come from a private, sentimental motivation. The character in the novel wrote love letters for someone else, much as happens to us in a certain sense, seeking out modesty and truth." Servillo, however, shies away from aestheticism for its own sake: "In working with Arto we didn't try to put together a nice-looking product, but rather to strip away the theatricality that was starting to weigh on us, and to make our melodies 'lighter'." A search for lightness combined, however, with the ambition to build songs capable of lasting through the years: that has always been their philosophy.

In 2000 Avion Travel took part in the fiftieth edition of the Sanremo Festival and surprisingly won the event with "Sentimento", a track dense with refined arrangements and poignant melodies, also picking up the Special Critics' Award and the Quality Jury Prize for "Best Music" and "Best Arrangement". An unexpected triumph for a band that had made a point of pride out of being "alternative", though at times that had also proved a limitation.

A successful Italian tour followed, along with a European tour taking in Spain, Germany and France.

In December 2000 came the album Storie d'amore: a tribute to Italian song and, more broadly, to the evergreen music of the Sixties. The selection of tracks, made from a wide pool of songs, was carried out with Avion Travel fully aware they were searching for songs that were musically significant and that would allow the band to express their own style.

Among the tracks there's a strong whiff of saudade, helped along by a cover of a Jobim song. And indeed, "there's always a Brazilian feeling hovering over Avion Travel. Even though there's no such thing as one kind of music being different from another, there is an expression of music, and for us recording this track was like a brushstroke of colour passing from one side of a painting to the other without touching the central image."

Launched in Paris with a showcase, Selezione 1990-2000 was released in France in June 2001, an anthology that includes, alongside "Sentimento", many lesser-known little gems such as "Aria di te", "Dormi e sogna" and "L'astronauta". A sampler of evocative, suggestive music, poised between Italian tradition (Modugno, De André, Tenco) and South American rhythms, which finds its best form in their highly distinctive live shows. The only drawback: a certain self-satisfied preciousness, which at times undermines the immediacy of the songs.

On 4 April 2003 came the new work from "Piccola Orchestra", Other basins mostly calm, the result of the band's collaboration with producer Pasquale Minieri (who in recent years has worked with various artists including Lucio Battisti, Claudio Baglioni and Vinicio Capossela). The album, which marks a further turning point in the musical path of Piccola Orchestra Avion Travel, also features female voices for the first time: Peppe Servillo duets with Elisa and Caterina Caselli.

"Piccolo Tormento", one of the tracks on the new album, is also the main theme of the soundtrack to Mimmo Calopresti's film "La felicità non costa niente", in which Peppe Servillo himself makes a cameo appearance.

Meanwhile, interest in Avion Travel's music was also growing abroad, to the point of prompting them to put together a Best of for the international market. The album Per come ti amo, released in France in 2004 (and in 2005 also released in Belgium and Holland under the title "Selezione"), charts a musical journey through the band's previous ten years of recording career. The journey took them overseas, to the Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, as well as to several renowned clubs, including Joe's Pub in New York, during the spring of 2005.

The need to explore new musical horizons pushes the group toward very different projects from one another: Peppe Servillo devotes himself to the Aires Tango tour; Ferruccio Spinetti starts his own experimental project with Petra Magoni; Fausto Mesolella sets off on tour with guitarist Michele Ascolese for the Chitarre Vagabonde project; Mario Tronco and Peppe D’Argenzio join the Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio.

The experiences and influences absorbed during these years of “parallel” projects push the group back into the studio after three years, for a new and important challenge: an album of songs by Paolo Conte, performed by themselves and recorded under the artistic direction of Conte himself, who also wrote a song specifically for this album (“Il Giudizio di Paride”) and performed a verse of “Elisir” together with Gianna Nannini.

The album Danson Metropoli – Canzoni di Paolo Conte includes eleven of the biggest hits by the singer-songwriter from Asti, and marks the debut of the new lineup of Avion Travel, who go from being a small orchestra to a quartet: Peppe Servillo on vocals, Fausto Mesolella on guitar, Mimì Ciaramella on drums and Vittorio Remino on bass.

Meanwhile, the Campania-based group has also collaborated with the GiocoVita theatre of Piacenza on a show telling the story of Verdi as a child: “We wrote all the music for the soundtrack,” they explained. “It’s an original and very interesting show; the shadow-theatre work is always of excellent quality.” But the real “dream in the drawer” of the “Piccola Orchestra” from Caserta is the one you’d least expect. “We’d love to write a song for the Zecchino d’Oro. It’s an ambitious project, we’ve been talking about it for a while now, because if we managed to pull it off, it would mean achieving something very important in our career. But it’s difficult — you have to work backwards, look back and dress the song with words suited to children, with the immediacy of a child’s language.” But for Peppe Servillo, frontman and family man, it could be another curious challenge worth winning.

(Excerpts from the biography featured on www.primomaggio.com/)

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