Chiara Civello - The internationally popular singer-songwriter

We last left Chiara Civello holed up in her home/studio in Rio de Janeiro in the middle of the pandemic, doing the odd home streaming performance to exorcise the anguish of lockdown. It was on that very occasion that the most cosmopolitan of Italian singer-songwriters told us about her project "Chansons", a collection of French classics that have become international standards, sung in countless languages around the world. Now that the album has finally come out, we take the opportunity for a new chat with her, ranging from her strengthened partnership with producer Marc Collin (Nouvelle Vague) to her vintage taste for the cinematic sounds of the 60s and 70s, from her cameo in the Rai drama "Imma Tataranni" to her collaboration with writer Emanuele Trevi (fresh off winning the Premio Strega) on the previously unreleased "Perdiamoci", from music in the post-pandemic era to the current Italian scene.

Welcome back, Chiara, we're delighted that “Chansons” has finally come out, the album you told us about in our previous interview. Can you tell us what criteria you used to choose the songs? I imagine it must have been tough to select them from the vast wealth of French song.

The selection process was entirely empirical. It's a project that was proposed to me by my producer, Marc Collin of Nouvelle Vague, who also has great experience with covers – although that's a term I don't love much, I'd rather speak of reinterpretations, of new readings. After the positive experience of “Eclipse”, I decided to trust his vision conceptually, because we've always found great empathy with each other. He's a very special producer, a creator of atmospheres, he has this pictorial vision of music: he draws light, shadow… And that has always enchanted me. So we started a ping-pong of ideas together, always fueled by enthusiasm: he had in mind a tribute to those great international standards that not many people know were actually written by French pens. That's the basic concept, which also helped us narrow the field a bit.

The most telling case is that of “My Way”…

Yes, nobody knows it isn't a song by Paul Anka or Frank Sinatra, but that it comes from “Comme d’habitude” by the French duo Claude François and Jacques Revaux. And by the way, nobody knows either that a first attempt at an English version was made by David Bowie! Very often, over the years, these songs become a repository for voices, talents, and artistic personalities revolving around a beautiful melody.

In any case, you decided to sing these songs not only in French, but also in English and Italian.

Yes, the most interesting thing for me was precisely the choice of which language to sing in. I made the first drafts partly in English, partly in Italian, but then I increasingly focused on what resonated best in my heart, so for instance I decided to do “Col tempo” (by Léo Ferré, ed.), which I always used to listen to as a child, when in summer my father and I would drive alone across the whole of Italy to reach Sicily, to our hometown of Modica. Or, for example, “Ne me quitte pas”, always in the version by Gino Paoli or the one sung by Patty Pravo (“Non andare via”, ed.). And then there's “Un uomo, una donna”, which I really enjoyed singing in Italian, with these words so ethereal and cinematic, in the style of Francis Lai. “La Vie En Rose”, on the other hand, is a very angelic, very “rosy” 1950s song, which we wanted to turn upside down with a completely different mood, where the only “light” thing, fluttering over the notes, is me, while everyone else is anchored to a driving rhythm.

We also saw you on TV, in a cameo in the Rai drama “Imma Tataranni”. How did the idea come about?

It was a very evocative experience to step into a drama as myself, a bit like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. It was a wonderful experience, because I also sang the first song composed by Emanuele Trevi, who has just won the Premio Strega and whom I consider one of the best writers on the current Italian scene. In a dark moment, for Italy and for the world, during lockdown, the idea for this song was born, “Perdiamoci”, with which you could step into Imma's magical world. It's an excellent show that has enjoyed well-deserved success – suffice it to say that episode got a 25% audience share.

Almost better than going to Sanremo… Speaking of which, are you tempted to try again?

Right now I'm not thinking about it at all, I'm too focused on my Chansons and on my tour.

So, let's talk about the “Chansons” tour…

It will kick off in Rovereto on December 11th. I'll also be in Milan at the Blue Note (December 17th and 18th) and at the Auditorium in Rome on March 8th, for a special concert on International Women's Day. The setlist will also include “Perdiamoci” plus other gems from my repertoire, alongside, of course, the songs from “Chansons”.

I really loved your version of Charles Aznavour's “Hier Encore”, translated into the funky “Yesterday When I Was Young”.

It's a joyful way of bringing new life to a very melancholic piece from the past. There's also an element of improvisation, because much of the album was born in the studio with the musicians. Then, in post-production, Marc and I worked on the details.

Listening to you talk, you can tell you now have complete control over your music – have you almost developed the experience of a producer yourself?

I'm also very passionate about sounds, about the sonic frame around a song — I can't just put a vocal on a track. I need to feel the song's hidden pulse, the thing that stirs the soul, so sometimes I have to get deep into the crevices of the tracks, into their atmospheres. And I love surrendering to a producer's vision, as happened with Marc. He's a perfectionist, attentive to every kind of vocal echo and return of sound, to reverbs, to rustles — suggestions that go almost beyond music itself.

One of the "Chansons" is "I Will Wait For You (Les parapluies de Cherbourg)" by Michel Legrand, the composer who changed your life. Can you tell us the story?

Yes, he's one of my idols, he really moves me deeply. "I Will Wait For You" (from the film "Les parapluies de Cherbourg") is a theme of such sweet melancholy, like almost all of his music. And I'll never forget the Legrand song that changed my life, with the almost prophetic title: "What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life". After singing it at an audition for a Berklee College of Music scholarship, at just 16 years old, I won it and, once I finished high school, I left... for the rest of my life.

We last left you in Brazil, dealing with livestreamed concerts from home. At the time you told us there wasn't yet a real lockdown, but then we know how it went — Brazil was one of the countries hardest hit by the pandemic.

In Brazil, unfortunately, it was a massacre. I stayed there another four or five months, and came back to Italy in June 2021. I was safe, but also very worried, because we were isolated, flights had been completely suspended. There were only sporadic embassy flights, but you had to get to São Paulo, and from there take a domestic flight where there were no precautions at all. In short, a very difficult situation. I did well to pull back and stay isolated where I was.

Beyond the restrictions, do you think the pandemic also changed music?

Maybe in a few years, when we listen back to the records made during this period, something will come back to us, but these are things you perceive more with the passage of time. A lot has changed inside us, beyond our existential or creative choices. A pause like this can't help but cause trauma, inner changes in every person. Life sooner or later confronts us with limits, and we have to try to take it as an experience to learn something from too.

On that occasion you also told me about another project of yours in the works, the album with Yuka Honda of Cibo Matto and Jim Campilongo. Where does that stand?

The album is basically done — I don't know if it'll be my next one or the one after that, but I'm very happy with my collaborations with musicians I find genuinely interesting, like Yuka and Jim.

Where does this passion of yours for vintage — and somewhat cinematic — sounds from the '60s and '70s come from?

I'm deeply passionate about a way of experiencing music rooted in freedom. If we think of the work of composers like Ennio Morricone, Piero Piccioni, Piero Umiliani, Luis Bacalov, they all had tremendous freedom and fluidity, they didn't set limits of genre or style for themselves, they put music at the service of images and so they made it their own. It was the suggestion of the images that inspired their sound. That musical fluidity is what fascinates me most, the beauty of being able to do anything you want with a song. Back then, the same song could be sung by Elvis, as well as by Mina, Dalida or Ornella Vanoni... songs circulated among many different voices. Today, since singers are generally the authors of their own material, they rarely swap songs with each other. It's that same fluidity that allowed certain songs to become giant, to turn into international classics. Which obviously doesn't rule out writing new ones — I try to do both.

It makes you think that maybe if you'd been born in that era you would have been better understood. Today, especially in Italy, we're living in times of sovereignism, of musical self-sufficiency, with charts dominated by Italian records (and bad ones, more often than not). Is it harder for someone like you, who sets out to be "internationally popular", to use the definition we coined together a few interviews ago?

Honestly, I don't worry about that side of things, I can't let myself be conditioned by market concerns — I only have to concern myself with emotions and sounds. If I really paid attention to these marketing issues, it would be a brake rather than a boost to my work. I also lived abroad for a long time, but not because I had no way of working in Italy — I simply lived there and released my music from there.

It's no coincidence that, coming across your videos on YouTube, you often find that a good chunk of the comments come from Brazil...

True, but Brazil is a gigantic country, maybe forty times the size of Italy. We're talking about tens of millions of people, so it's only logical that it would be that way. Still, I'm very proud of my Italian audience, which has been growing in recent years.

What are you listening to these days?

I'm listening to a lot of young artists, like LNDFK, a singer-songwriter and producer who has both Tunisian and Neapolitan roots - she'll be playing with me soon, too - or Emma Nolde, who I love. Then there's the Naples scene, bands like New Genea. I love Olivia Trummer, an outstanding German pianist who's basically been adopted by Italy by now. So many interesting artists are emerging here, not necessarily under the radar, because Italian radars are a bit rigged anyway…

I believe it, everyone's too busy with Maneskin…

(Laughs) Yeah, exactly. In my own small way I'm trying to make room for new talent through two projects I've been entrusted with, the artistic direction of Ambiente Sud and of Trento's Centro servizi culturali, Santa Chiara, where I get the chance to give space to others, to support our country's musical culture.

By now you're almost an international cultural mediator.

Well, that's what I've always wanted to do: be an international ambassador for music.

(05/12/2021)

From Brazil, with passion

"I'm stuck here in Rio de Janeiro. I don't leave the house, even though people here still go out, walking the streets and the beach I can see from my window. I spend my time reading and making music - the live kind, through my streams, and the kind I'm working on for my new records." Forced exile in Brazil because of the coronavirus hasn't stopped Chiara Civello, the most cosmopolitan of Italian singer-songwriters, who wanted to bring her music to her audience even from within her own four walls. In this interview she tells us how she's experiencing this unusual moment and about her future plans.

You had concerts scheduled in China. You risked being right there in the middle of the outbreak…

I was supposed to perform in February at the Blue Note in Shanghai and Beijing. Right when we went to sort out the visa paperwork, we raised the issue of safety and health, even though at that point the spread of the virus still seemed limited to Wuhan and the surrounding area. At first we were told there'd be no danger, but then, at the end of January, we got an email announcing the shows had been cancelled, precisely because of the outbreak.

So you decided to make up for it with a livestream. How did the idea for the March 13th at-home concert come about?

Yes, I was really upset about the concerts being cancelled - I'd played in Asia before, in Japan especially, and I started wondering how I could get my music to people stuck at home. Basically, we had to rely on creativity, and technology gave us a hand. I'm certainly no pioneer in this field, but I managed to organize a livestream for the Blue Note China website, which was then picked up by my social media channels. The timing didn't work great for Italy, but it was done at 2pm precisely because it was 9pm in China.

How did the Chinese audience respond to the show?

Really well, so many messages came in that I'll never manage to translate them all! But the Blue Note producer assured me the response was excellent, and a lot of Chinese viewers even recognized the songs. The technical result was good too, because it wasn't just me filming myself with a guitar: there was a crew here at my house helping out, all strictly sanitized and keeping their distance. It was a first test, and a very encouraging one.

Will you repeat the experiment?

I really hope so, maybe at times more suited to the Italian audience. With distribution on my social media channels. I'd like to do it with guests, but with all the necessary precautions, if that's possible. You can travel with music and with your mind even while stuck at home.

What's the situation like there in Brazil?

So far there have only been a few hundred cases here. People kept living as usual: Brazilians are cheerful and easygoing, they see a sunny day and find it hard to understand the need to stay shut in at home. Now, though, they're closing schools for 15 days. I hope people become more aware soon: we need to stay home.

In times of isolation, music seems to be the only form of social gathering left: do you like the idea of flash mobs singing from balconies?

Yes, it's a wonderful idea, I got the suggestion too to go out at 6pm, except with the time difference here it would be 2pm and I'd be on my own... but I might give it a try. Jokes aside, being far from Italy at such a hard time makes me very sad, but there are ways to stay united even with oceans in between, and music is one of them.

Once the emergency is over, will you go back to doing all the shows you had planned?

Of course, starting with the concerts in China, which mean a lot to me. Then I had some live dates already postponed to May, but I don't think those will be possible on those dates either. I was organizing duo shows with Rita Marcotulli, together with a cellist. And I was also preparing a summer tour with an all-female samba group, Samba que elas querem (literally: "The samba women want"), who would have come to Europe from Brazil for the first time. They play roots samba, drawing inspiration from female pioneers of the genre from many years ago. I'd love to bring them to Italy soon.

What do you think will change in the music world after this storm passes?

The global crisis will be devastating, especially considering that live music seemed to have become the industry's main resource by now, far more than sales. Priorities will need to be reorganized. Maybe some habits will change too. For instance, I wouldn't rule out including some of my new material in one of my upcoming live shows, as soon as I can resume them. There's no longer any justification for sticking to rigid chronologies and hierarchies. We'll have to come out of this chaos with new, creative solutions.

Are you also working on new recording projects?

Yes, I have three in the works. The first one, which I've already started performing live in part, is a tribute to the bridge of musical friendship between Brazil and Italy, from the '50s to today: from "La banda" by Mina, which was originally a song by Chico Buarque de Hollanda, to "Canzone per te" by Roberto Carlos and Sergio Endrigo, up to the present day, including some original songs too. So it will involve reinterpreting songs that were huge hits in both Italy and Brazil. The producer is the legendary Nelson Motta, who is also a journalist and a great enthusiast of Italy, speaks our language perfectly and has deep knowledge of our music. He's the man who translated "E poi che fa" by Pino Daniele into "Bem que se quis" — Marisa Monte's first big hit — and who in the '90s took a 1947 Italian song, "Veleno" by Polacci, and turned it into a massive hit for another Brazilian singer, Marina Lima ("Veneno"). It will be a small songbook about the love between Italy and Brazil, with Motta's seal of approval, since he's a bit of a new Sergio Bardotti.

A love for Brazil that Italian singers have often shown too. Just think of Ornella Vanoni, for instance...

Of course, "L'appuntamento", for example, was a song by Roberto and Erasmo Carlos, translated by Bruno Lauzi. Not to mention Toquinho and Vinicius de Moraes, who were frequent visitors to Italy. And let's not forget Chico Buarque, who made an album with Ennio Morricone featuring Loredana Bertè and Mia Martini on backing vocals.

And let's not forget you either, who collaborated with Chico Buarque on "Io che amo solo te"...

Sure. And also with Gilberto Gil on “Io che non vivo senza te”, also on my album “Songs”.

Yes, you really do seem like the perfect ambassador for the mission. And the other two record projects?

I'll be making an album together with Marc Collin of Nouvelle Vague, who already produced my “Eclipse”. It'll be a collection of French chansons with a sound that's always a bit eccentric and live-flavored: it's already being mixed, so it'll be out soon, maybe even before the other two. But I can't reveal anything else.

The third album, meanwhile, produced entirely by me, is the culmination of work that started a year and a half ago in a studio in Italy and was then carried on around the world. It's a record with essentially just three people involved: me, Yuka Honda (formerly of Cibo Matto), the Japanese electronic musician, and Jim Campilongo, an extraordinary country-jazz-rock guitarist from New York. Just think, Fender even made a guitar model just for him...

It'll be an experimental record with some very bold choices, poised between electronics and melody. I wanted to create a mix between my own "tropicalismo in reverse" world, which strips away every boundary from music rooted in Italy too, opening it up to other languages, and the different approaches of these two great musicians based in New York. The album will also include the soundtrack I wrote for the Rai series “Illuminate”, about four great Italian women of the 20th century, but in a remixed version. In short, it's a real gem, and I'd like to release it in some special format too, maybe a limited edition or on vinyl.

Will it be an album of new material?

Half and half. There will be four new tracks, while the other four will be covers.

So you're basically going to travel the whole world across three albums... Can we still use the term “international-popular”, then?

Oh yes, it's my mission by now, isn't it? And it's satisfying to see the response from audiences keeps growing and getting more loyal, now in Italy too.

Right now, do you feel more like a performer or a songwriter?

I have to admit that lately I find it hard to leave the purely-performer side of me at home when it comes to other people's songs. After “Songs”, which was my first tribute to Italian music, it's difficult for me to focus solely on writing, because Chiara the singer often falls in love with other people's songs and ends up winning out over Chiara the songwriter.

Burt Bacharach wrote “Trouble” for you. Are you still in touch with him?

Yes, we still talk, we've stayed in touch. He always has incredible energy, he's an example for everyone.

Well then, enjoy your stay in Brazil, hoping this forced one ends soon and that you can get back to performing in Italy.

Thank you, and greetings to the whole OndaRock team too, you're always a precious source of recommendations!

(17/03/2020)

Chiara, what kind of record is “Eclipse”? Could it be described as a synthesis of all your previous experiences?

In a way, yes: it's a record that brings together all my passions and my life as a wanderer — America, jazz, bossa nova, pop, the film scores of the '60s and '70s. The previous album, “Songs,” was born out of a need to pay tribute to the Italian classics after so much roaming around the world. Here, I tried to get even closer to my own country, seeking out the most original voices on today's scene: Francesco Bianconi (Baustelle), Cristina Donà, Dimartino, Diego Mancino, Diana Tejera... With them I sought a synthesis of all the different souls of my music.

All of it, though, reworked in an electronic guise by the production of Marc Collin. How did you meet him?

Yes, and it's the first time I've tried my hand at electronic sounds. I met Marc in Paris in the summer of 2015, when I was opening for Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, and it was love at first sight. After listening to my new songs, Marc proposed a new take that preserved my style while pairing it with electronic sounds. I didn't need to be asked twice: I set off for Paris, took a place in the Marais, and we immediately immersed ourselves in a magical world of '70s electric organs, synths and drum machines.

The record does indeed have a very vintage feel to it. Or rather, “retro-futurist.”

That's exactly the idea. Collin managed to modernize songs with very classic structures, with a taste that is both postmodern and vintage. The electric organs give that retro touch that harks back to the film scores of the '60s and '70s, but there are also more modern, distinctly synthetic sounds, from Grace Jones-style electronic drums to synth bass.

The result is very refined. Perhaps too refined for the Italian charts?

I don't think so — even “Songs,” which was also a very refined record, though more played, more jazz-oriented, always did well. Besides, what matters to me is to keep making quality work: I would never want to become one of those singers who change a comma here and there just to draw an audience. Whenever I write, I never think about making a big hit single, but rather something strong for myself, something the audience can identify with.

Do you feel you've overcome the paradox of being one of the few Italian singers of international stature who is nonetheless better known abroad than at home?

Yes, in recent years I've tried to get closer to our own music again, but my goal remains to expand the boundaries of the Italian song, even at the risk of becoming unpopular. Fortunately, though, that's not the case: I see positive feedback, I tour theaters, and my audience keeps growing steadily. I'm also convinced that doing work that is unmistakably outside the trends, that doesn't wink at fads, can pay off, if it ultimately leads to records made with real soul, like “Eclipse.” In any case, I've chosen a life of international music, of concerts abroad, of collaborations — things that make you feel alive in the world, not just in your own country.

On “Eclipse” there are many covers inspired by cinema. What's your relationship with the big screen?

“Eclipse” fulfilled my desire to make a “visual,” pictorial album, made of “cinematic songs,” songs on film. I'm a huge film lover, contemporary cinema included. But to stay true to the sound we chose with Marc, we focused on the '60s and '70s, decades in which Italian music reached one of its highest peaks, thanks to a generation of extraordinary artists and an incredible syncretism of classical, jazz, bossa nova, funk... Those composers never worried about drawing on music that wasn't necessarily indigenous to Italy — yet they managed to internalize it, to make it immediately “ours,” putting it at the service of Italian cinema's images and adding our own instrumentation, like the electric keyboards we were talking about. I also liked the idea of encounters between musicians, actors and directors, which is why I chose “Eclisse Twist,” written by Michelangelo Antonioni with Giovanni Fusco, or “Quello che conta,” composed by Ennio Morricone with director Luciano Salce for the film “La cuccagna,” and “Amore, amore, amore,” written by Piero Piccioni together with Alberto Sordi. And “Parole parole” was also composed by a master of film scores, Gianni Ferrio.

Is that contribution from those composers missing in Italian cinema today?

Yes, but it was an irreproducible era… Composers with a wild culture, yet perfectly immersed in the fray of live musicianship. It wasn't just a simple orchestral score, it was the idea of actually playing and creating grooves, atmospheres, capturing those moments in songs.

Speaking of retrofuturism, just the name Piero Umiliani comes to mind.

A giant. I often go digging on YouTube and listen again to the encounters between Umiliani and Helen Merrill: it was pure magic. Jazz and Brazilian music are the great wellsprings of my music, because they're syncretic musics, between Africa and the most classical Western music: samba and bossa nova are almost a fusion of Africa and Villa-Lobos. But you can feel that syncretism enormously in those soundtracks too, where there was the courage to mix the most disparate styles.

And the result was often… pop!

Exactly, that period produced so many memorable melodies. If pop in Italy today tends to be very homogenized, in our history we carry a pop tradition that is instead very refined, and that's what interests me most. I think of artists who do crossover work: Tony Bennett, Norah Jones, Diana Krall, Melody Gardot… that's pop too, but on another level.

And of course we couldn't leave out your beloved Brazil, where you remain hugely popular: our previous interview got a huge amount of likes and comments from that part of the world.

Yes, with Brazil it was love at first sight even as a young girl, when I was studying at Berklee College of Music in Boston, a school that had given me a scholarship. And I still have a special bond with that country. On "Eclipse" there are specifically two tracks recorded in Rio. "Sambarilove" came out of a collaboration with Rubinho Jacobina, a brilliant musician I'd met through Orchestra Imperial, at the Festa degli Innamorati, which in Brazil falls on June 12th: it's a song that's meant to be a kind of skewed onomatopoeia of "Somebody To Love", and it also plays on the word "Bari", the city where I made part of the record; we took this danceable rhythm, the sambalanço, typical of a certain era, a bit iê-iê-iê, and Marc turned it upside down with his irony, adding electronic drums, synth bass and Mauro Refosco's real percussion. "Um Dia", on the other hand, is a kind of disco transposition of Sergio Mendes, co-written with Pedro Sá, an excellent guitarist who has worked with Caetano Veloso and Orchestra Imperial: Pedro and I are both Geminis, so we joked about the contradictions of our star sign: "Un giorno vuoi fuggire di casa, un giorno dici che tutto cambierà, un giorno che tutto tornerà"…

Will you be taking the album on tour?

Yes, starting in early May. I'll kick off in Rome, May 4th at the Auditorium, then Naples on the 5th (San Giovanni Maggiore), Bari on the 10th (Teatro Palazzo) and Milan on the 12th (Unicredit Pavilion). The tour will continue through the summer, then I'll go to Brazil for four or five shows, and we'll also be releasing the album in France.

Are you still in touch with Burt Bacharach? What did meeting him leave you with?

Yes, we're still in touch, I always send him the things I make and he often puts "Trouble" in his compilations. Bacharach lives on in everything I write, that experience with him is something I'll carry with me forever. He taught me above all how to handle composition, how to shake things up, always looking, even in the most tightly structured songs, for that breeze, those currents of air able to set them in motion, maybe just by cutting a bar, adding a chord or a beat. In short, it's the idea of never falling into conformity and of stretching a song's boundaries by combining different, unpredictable elements.

Will you go back to Sanremo, or do you consider that experience a closed chapter in your career?

I'm not thinking about it. I'm very focused on the present, and if I look to the future, I dream of other things, like drawing on all the other sounds from around the world that intrigue me. But then again, who knows, one day I might go back.

You've duetted with so many wonderful performers, from Al Jarreau to Gilberto Gil and Chico Buarque. Who would you like to sing with in the future?

On this record I preferred to do “compositional duets,” but the idea of two voices coming together still intrigues me. I like, for instance, female singers like Concha Buika and Hindi Zahra. But the dream would be Paolo Conte.

Indeed, a duet with Conte would be the ultimate. Will you propose it to him?

Thanks, but no, I don't feel up to it…

(14/04/2017 – Extended version of an interview published in “Leggo”)

There's an Italian singer who has already written songs with Burt Bacharach and dueted with giants like Chico Buarque, Gilberto Gil and Al Jarreau. She's half the age of Ornella Vanoni and she's not Fiorella Mannoia… Her name is Chiara Civello, born in Rome but cosmopolitan in practice, with a 7,752-kilometer red thread linking the two cities closest to her heart: New York, where she lived for a long time, and Rio de Janeiro, now her adopted homeland. Now, though, she wants to put her velvety voice to the test with Italian “Songs”.

Chiara, why an album of Italian covers?

“Songs” is a record born out of a personal need of mine. After four albums as a singer-songwriter, I felt the need to pour all the world I've lived in these years, between New York and Brazil, into a tribute to Italian song. It's my first record as an interpreter, with stylistic influences ranging from jazz to soul to bossa nova, which are pretty much the worlds I've lived in over these years.

A record full of collaborations, featuring international guests like Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque, Esperanza Spalding and Ana Carolina, while the sonic architecture was arranged by Eumir Deodato and performed by the Prague Symphony Orchestra…

Yes, I really wanted to seal this idea of a tribute to Italy through international collaborations. The producer is Nicola Conte, a musician and DJ I respect a great deal, a true aesthete. Together we put together this Italian anthology that ranges from Umberto Bindi to Vasco Rossi… We didn't want it to be a nostalgic operation, just a tribute under a stylistically coherent umbrella that flirts a bit with all these styles.

Indeed there was a risk of producing a rather confused hodgepodge. Instead everything is held together by this common denominator of style…

Yes, because we also wanted to be very varied, bringing together artists from today and yesterday: it goes from Vasco Rossi to Vinicio Capossela, from Paolo Conte to Subsonica, from Sergio Endrigo to Pino Donaggio. There's even a Rita Pavone song, arranged by Bacalov to lyrics by Lina Wertmuller (“Fortissimo”). And we also wanted to pay a small tribute to cinema, including “Metti una sera a cena”, a wonderful song by Ennio Morricone, taken from the film by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi.

How did your great passion for Brazil come about, instead?

It was love at first sight. At eighteen I moved to America to attend the Berklee College of Music, a school that had given me a scholarship. That's how I met so many musicians from different countries, including some Brazilians who introduced me to the world of Antonio Carlos Jobim, the king of bossa nova, Caetano Veloso, Milton Nascimento, tropicália. And it was a violent kind of love at first sight, because Brazilian music has this sublime way of bringing together rhythm, melody and harmony.

Sporting defeat aside, the World Cup in Brazil was, all things considered, well organized. How do you see this country, where you've also worked for a long time?

The situation isn't simple in Brazil, there are still plenty of contradictions. But the World Cup was a well-deserved opportunity for a country that has made huge strides, showing great resources and a real capacity for progress. I hope it can make the most of it.

And New York, what did it leave you with? Besides the 7,752 kilometers separating it from Rio de Janeiro (we laugh)

Yes, the album called 7.752 chilometri came about precisely from the desire to bring together my two favorite cities... Actually, New York left me with so much, not just musically, and it's a city I'm still trying to come to terms with. Living there was a fundamental experience for me.

Perhaps few people know that abroad you have an extraordinary reputation. Just to name one, an American icon like Tony Bennett called you "the best jazz singer of her generation"... In Italy, on the other hand, things seem much harder. How do you deal with this contrast – do you feel misunderstood?

I see it purely as a matter of time. The time I've spent outside Italy, devoted to Brazil and the United States, has been greater than the time I've dedicated to Italy. I left when I was very young, with nothing but a lot of dreams. My musical journey began there, and paradoxically I was introduced to Italians by Americans. But now that I have a bit more time to spend here, I want to do it properly, including through this latest album.

And what's your favorite Italian music?

We're the masters of melodic sense, even in the most classical tradition – just think of opera, of arias... The Italian music I listen to is mostly tied to melody, but I don't set limits for myself, I listen to a bit of everything, songs from today and from the past.

Speaking of Italian song, in 2012 you were at Sanremo in the Big Artists category with the track "Al posto del mondo". What was that experience like? Would you like to do it again?

It was a very intense experience, especially that staircase you have to walk down... (we laugh) that was maybe the hardest part, the real challenge! Anyway, I'm not thinking about going back there right now, but I wouldn't rule it out. I like to try lots of different experiences and I never close any doors... you always learn something.

Do you have a tour planned?

Yes, in July I'll be touring around Italy, but I'll also be playing shows in August and September. All the dates are on my Facebook page.

Few people also know that you co-wrote a song with a legend like Burt Bacharach. How did that meeting come about, and how did it end up yielding a track for your debut album?

It happened thanks to Russ Titelman, the producer of my first album ("Last Quarter Moon", ed.). He's quite famous in America because he produced Randy Newman, Chaka Khan, George Benson, James Taylor, Paul Simon... And he had the intuition to set up an important collaboration for me, he thought I needed the blessing of someone who could give me a kind of consecration...

And who better than Bacharach…

Exactly! Russ played him my first song and Bacharach said yes right away. So he and I went to Santa Monica, where we spent three days: we worked from 2pm to 5:20pm sharp, Bacharach was already getting on in years, plus he had a lot of other things going on… And that's how we wrote a song, “Trouble”, which I'm very attached to: whenever I write, I think of Bacharach a little.

Have you ever thought about making a record covering Bacharach's own songs? Your voice would seem quite suited to it…

Yes, I've thought about it, but the problem is that so many people have already done it, with spectacular voices. It's hard to compete with Dionne Warwick, for instance… Besides, he already arranges his own songs with a sound that flirts with soul and bossa nova, so doing a record like “Songs”, where you almost can't recognize the tracks compared to the originals, is one thing, but trying to imitate a style that's already very close to my own is another. You could try doing it unplugged, with guitar… but I'm not too convinced.

Another extraordinary artist who has stood by your side is Chico Buarque, also featured on “Songs”, in a gorgeous duet on “Io che amo solo te”. What does he mean to you?

He's a poet, a person of incredible culture, which comes through in the books he writes as well as in his songs. A vital figure, hugely important to Brazil. He writes wonderful lyrics and also has a strong connection to Italy. He's lived here, speaks Italian well, and was very close to Sergio Bardotti. He also knew Sergio Endrigo, another great Italian singer-songwriter. Singing with Chico was a unique emotion, something truly touching. He has that touch of gentle fragility, that quaver that seems like a mirror of his sensitive soul. And it's also the way of singing I feel closest to…

What kind of singing don't you like, on the other hand?

Well, generally the standard belted style that's so fashionable these days, with the same riffs for everyone.

In Italy it's used to excess, actually.

Yes, pretty much everyone sings that way now, and it's also what you always see on talent shows. It seems like that's the only way you're allowed to sing…

Speaking of which, what do you think of music talent shows?

I'm not against a format that's successful, I'm just saying that format is an invitation to laziness: it brings into the listener's home people simulating a live performance, which is also why it's called a “reality” show. But it's an optical illusion, you're not sitting in the room with them, you don't hear the noises and rustling of the moment, which are very much part of a live performance. And in the same way, for a singer, the talent show can't be the only springboard. If you don't have a wealth of experience behind you, how can you manage to sustain that level of substance? It's dangerous to find success before getting the audience's “gut” confirmation, which you can only test live. In other countries there's a different everyday relationship with music. In the US you'll find three thousand venues with three thousand up-and-coming bands playing, between jazz, rock and all sorts of little groups, same in Brazil, where even the taxi driver owns the latest niche samba record… Here in Italy it's more complicated.

So do you think it's advisable for an up-and-coming Italian singer to try what you did: go abroad, to countries that are more musically receptive, and put themselves to the test?

It depends on the kind of music that interests her. If she's more drawn to soul, black music or jazz, obviously gaining experience where that music was born is essential. A bit like an actor approaching a role: you need direct, first-hand knowledge. The thing about Italy that I find heavy and counterproductive is this bureaucratic, anti-democratic system that, instead of letting ideas flow, blocks them, imposing a whole series of mandatory steps that stifle creativity. In North America it's different: you do it and you make it happen. Without too many complications.

Have you now settled permanently in Italy, or do you still split your time with the US and Brazil?

I split my time constantly… right now I'll stay put for a while to promote the album, but then I'll go back to moving between Italy, the United States and Brazil.

(27/07/2014 – Extended version of an interview published in "Leggo")