Chiara Civello - The internationally popular singer-songwriter

Chiara Civello is an alien presence on Italy's female pop scene. While vulgar screechers from TV talent-show arenas continue to dominate the charts, the musical universe of this Rome-born, Sicilian-blooded chanteuse remains light years away, lost in her timeless haze of bossa nova languor, jazzy sinuousness and hushed vocals. A happy isolation that, bolstered also by her solid international pedigree, has always granted Civello absolute freedom in her artistic choices. A "tropicalism in reverse" world, which aims to expand the boundaries of Italian song, opening it up to other languages. "I want to be internationally popular": Chiara by name and by nature, the ambition of a young woman for whom Burt Bacharach went out of his way (writing a song for her), and whom Tony Bennett called "the best jazz singer of her generation". After much wandering between the United States and Brazil, miss Civello has put down roots again in Italy. But without giving up the cosmopolitan vocation that has set her apart since the earliest days of her career.

From Modica to Boston

Sicilian blood – from Modica, to be precise – but born in Rome (15 June 1975), Chiara Civello is the classic precocious talent, destined to be either fulfilled or frustrated depending on the choices made and the people encountered along the way. In her case, it will be (almost) a straight path.

She starts playing piano as a child, encouraged by her grandmother Bianca. At just 13 she is already attending Rome's Saint Louis School, where she gets to know her first teacher, Edda Dell'Orso, the legendary soprano behind Ennio Morricone's scores for Sergio Leone's western trilogy and many others, as well as a prestigious collaborator on numerous Italian productions, from De André to De Gregori. After a while she is succeeded by Cinzia Spata, who senses all of young Chiara's qualities and encourages her to try out for the auditions that Umbria Jazz grants to the school's students. It's thanks to her rendition of Michel Legrand's "What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life" that she wins a scholarship to Boston's Berklee College of Music. Meanwhile, she also takes her first musical steps in Italy, playing for the Mario Raya Big Band and collaborating with jazz-scene artists such as Stefano Di Battista, Roberto Gatto and Danilo Rea.

But the big leap to the States is her first smart move. Having just turned 18, in 1994 she moves to Boston to study at the Berklee College of Music, where she forms a jazz trio with Alain Mallet, John Lockwood and Jamey Haddad. After graduating, she settles in New York, where by 2002 she already lands a formidable opportunity: recording some of her own compositions for James Taylor's album "October Road".

Then there's the matter of meeting the right people. The first and most important of these, for her, is Russ Titelman, producer of stars such as Randy Newman, Chaka Khan, George Benson, James Taylor and Paul Simon. The young Roman vocalist manages to cross paths with him thanks to the musicians she works with, who orbit precisely within Simon's circle. And Titelman is enchanted. It's love at first sight, allowing Chiara to record her debut album and, at the same time, achieve an extraordinary first: she becomes the first Italian artist in history to debut with a record released on the prestigious Verve Records label.

The album is called Last Quarter Moon (2005), produced by Titelman himself, and contains twelve jazz-pop tracks (sung in English, Italian and Portuguese), made with the support of great musicians such as drummer Steve Gadd, keyboardist Larry Goldings, Jimmy Greene on sax and Daniel Jobim (grandson of the great Tom, and the voice on "Sambaroma", a first tribute to the promised land of Brazil). The icing on the cake is a supple ballad called "Trouble", for which none other than his majesty Burt Bacharach is enlisted, co-writing with her a song that sounds as if it stepped straight out of the Brill Building in the early '60s, and which, from the very first listen, feels like a timeless instant classic.

Besides showcasing performances of undeniable class and elegance, Civello also shows her mettle as a songwriter, penning the two atmospheric piano ballads "Parole incerte" (an aching reflection on love's misunderstandings) and "In questi giorni", and then – together with Alvear Eduardo Alex – the tropical-tinged melancholy of "Ora" (the only three tracks in Italian). Overall, hazy jazzy atmospheres dominate ("Last Quarter Moon"), moving between Julie London-style swing inflections ("Here Is Everything", featuring a sax solo by Miguel Zenon), singer-songwriter pop ("The Wrong Goodbye") and early Astrud Gilberto-style bossa nova languor ("Sambaroma" and the cover of Rosa Passos and Fernando DeOliveira's "Outono"). Finally, there's a delightful reinterpretation of the already fine "Caramel" by Suzanne Vega, made here even softer and more aching.

The album comes out at a favorable moment for jazz-pop, dominated by artists like Diana Krall and Norah Jones, and perhaps partly for this reason it achieves excellent results on the US charts, reaching number 46 on Billboard and selling more than 32,000 copies, earning it the title of "Top Jazz Album". The American press is equally generous with its praise. Billboard Magazine writes that "the beauty, charm and charisma of her debut signal to the world the first revelation of the new year", the International Herald Tribune states that "her combination of personality, depth and sophistication is impressive", while the webzine Jazz Times highlights the Brazilian influences, noting that "Chiara Civello seems to have spent her formative years in Rio, rather than in Rome". The record will also win over Cyndi Lauper, who will call it "captivating and fantastic".

It's a shame that, back in Italy, hardly anyone will notice. Such is the fate of the brain drain…

Intimate Space

More intimate and hermetic is her second album, The Space Between, produced by Steve Addabbo for Emarcy/Universal Jazz and Classic in 2007, its cover showing a pensive Civello with a flower in her hair, in a shot reminiscent of Holiday. "It's an album about space," she explains. "About the space between notes, the silences between words, the space between me and you, between me and my past or my future, and about all the kinds of space we find so hard to think about these days… the space that lets you perceive reality more clearly, the space that forces you to feel someone's absence, the space that stops you from saying everything at once, letting it out little by little instead, as the need to say it grows stronger."

The album, again released on Verve, brings together jazz melodies steeped in Brazilian music, but also touched by blues and pop shades. Besides piano, Civello also takes up acoustic guitar, backed by the percussion of Mauro Refosco (Thom Yorke, David Byrne), a musician with an innovative style that never overwhelms, and who shines on the drum-driven "L Train". It's all suffused with that Brazilian melancholy known as "saudade", which hovers over the record from the (splendid) opener "Night" onward. Hushed, nocturnal, smoky-nightclub tones still prevail ("If You Ever Think Of Me", "Un passo dopo l'altro", "My Broken Heart"), handled with performances that are always sophisticated but never cloying.

Worth noting too are the covers of Harry Nilsson — a "Without Him (Her)" rearranged in samba-bossa nova style — and of Hoagy Carmichael (a poignant jazzed-up version of "Skylark"), alongside the nostalgic ballad co-written with actor/musician Rocco Papaleo, whom she met on holiday in Stromboli ("Isola").

Between Rio and New York

Having cemented her reputation overseas, Civello sets out to make a name for herself in Italy too, performing at Umbria Jazz in 2008 and co-writing with Pino Daniele the song "L'ironia di sempre", included by the Neapolitan singer-songwriter on his album "Ricomincio da 30". That same year she also works with Nicola Conte, appearing as a vocalist on his "Rituals".

The following year, she heads to Brazil, where Daniel Jobim is waiting for her. In Rio de Janeiro, she performs at a "sarao", a kind of musical gathering where a guitar is passed around and each person takes a turn singing a song. Chiara sings "Isola". It's there that she makes contact with artists such as Ana Carolina, Dudu Falcão and Totonho Villeroy.

The Brazilian influence thus remains central to her projects once again, as shown by her third album, released in 2010 with a distinctly geographical title: 7752. That's the number of kilometres, as the crow flies, separating her two beloved cities: New York, where she's long lived, and Rio de Janeiro, by now her adopted homeland.

Across the ten new tracks, Civello's sound turns a little more pop and less jazz, smoothing out its edges and coming across overall as sunnier and more inviting. The orchestrations, however, lose none of their elegance, enriched by a star-studded cast under the supervision of Andres Levin at the console, with legendary guitarist Marc Ribot (a lifetime spent alongside Tom Waits) on electric guitar and Jaques Morelenbaum (who has worked alongside Tom Jobim, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Ryuichi Sakamoto) on cello and string arrangements, alongside longtime friends Mauro Refosco on percussion and Guilherme Monteiro on guitar, not to mention the thrilling rhythm section of Gene Lake and Jonathan Maron and Brazilian pop star Ana Carolina as special guest on vocals and guitar. The result is a happy alchemy of 60s rock, Italian melody, Brazilian harmony and R&B.

The record ranges from the sultry Latin flirtation of "8 storie", dusted with horns, to the velvety "Sofá" (written with Ana Carolina herself and young Roman singer-songwriter Diana Tejera), draped in mischief and seductive backing vocals; from the sense of "immense absence", full of regret and longing, in "Non avevo capito niente" to the jazzy vibrations of "I Didn't Want" and "One More Thing", echoing long nights spent in the shadow of the Big Apple. And while the romantic scars of "I'm Your Love" seem to have stepped straight out of a vintage 007 film soundtrack, no less retro is the beat of "Dimmi perché", which blooms into a radiant, quintessentially Italian melodic opening.

And then, of course, there's Brazil — the melodramatic Brazil steeped in saudade of Ana Carolina, co-star of the aching duet "Resta" (which would even become the theme song of the Brazilian telenovela "Passione", produced by Rede Globo), and the no less melancholy Brazil of a bossa nova by Antonio Villeroy, "Un uomo che non sa dire addio", recast here in an Italian singer-songwriter guise, with an unmistakable (and irresistible) Sixties flavour and a proudly feminist spirit.

Overall, 7752 is a record that takes bigger risks, striving to further broaden Civello's geographic and musical horizons, even at the cost of sounding less cohesive and sacrificing some of the classic jazz grounding of its predecessors. It would be reissued the following year in a deluxe edition, preceded by the single "Tre", again co-written with Papaleo.

Also in 2010, Civello co-writes with Dudu Falcao "Simplesmente Aconteceu" (theme song of the Brazilian telenovela "Guerra dos sexos"), "8 estorias", "10 minutos" and "Traição", which, alongside the aforementioned "Resta", would be included on Ana Carolina's album "N9ve". At the same time, she writes the song "Cuore distratto" for Paola Turci, included by the Roman artist on her album "Giorni di rose", and lends her voice to "Lacrime di coccodrillo", a single recorded by Joe Barbieri.

Italy, Blessing and Curse

By now an international star, acclaimed in the United States, where Tony Bennett proclaimed her "the best jazz singer of her generation," and in Brazil, where she's built a huge fanbase, Chiara Civello finally attempts to break through at home. But the attempt, as we'll see, turns out to be far more complicated than expected.

After taking part in the May 1st 2011 concert alongside Fabrizio Bosso and duetting with Mario Biondi on "All I Really Want," a song she wrote herself, Chiara gets the chance to compete in the Big Artists category at the 2012 Sanremo Festival. Her international status is beyond question, but in Italy she's little more than an unknown, and plenty of viewers find themselves wondering who this stunning chanteuse is, singing in such hushed tones so different from the rest of the lineup. So, despite a song with decent melodic impact (the airy ballad "Al posto del mondo," co-written with Diana Tejera), Chiara fails to make the final, ending up remembered, rather ingloriously, mainly for Shaggy's wandering hand during their duet performance - admittedly not a memorable one - of "You Don't Have To Say You Love Me" ("Io che non vivo senza te").

But for those interested only in the music, there's still the subsequent tour for Al posto del mondo (2012), which, alongside the earlier repertoire, features songs from the album of the same name. It's a rather uneven work: besides the Sanremo track, it dusts off Bacharach's old "Trouble" and offers a forgettable cover of "Il cuore è uno zingaro" (Nicola Di Bari and Nada's 1971 Sanremo hit), adding a mixed bag of new songs: the bluesy "Hey caro ragazzo," the swing-rock of "Got To Go" - written for her by Jesse Harris, Norah Jones's songwriter and guitarist - a delicate Bungaro ballad ("A me non devi dire mai"), a couple of unremarkable pop numbers co-written with Diana Tejera ("Scusa," "E se"), the near-vaudeville rock of "Una vita no" (with a helping hand from Valeria Rossi, of "Dammi tre parole" fame), and finally the real highlight, the romantic ballad "Problemi," a new duet with Ana Carolina that becomes a huge hit in Brazil in the version recorded by the singer from Juiz de Fora, winning the Multishow Award for song of the year (and ending up, inevitably, in yet another telenovela, "Fina estampa").

Overall, it's a record that attempts a tricky "Italianization" of this cosmopolitan artist of Sicilian descent, leaning too heavily on pop melody and sacrificing her precious jazz and bossa nova roots. And it won't be enough to win over an Italian market that remains largely unreceptive to Civello's hushed atmospheres and velvety vocals.

There's no shortage, though, of further prestigious opportunities to showcase her by-now undeniable international standing, such as the 2012 Christmas Concert, where Chiara duets with another legend: Al Jarreau. Her ties to Brazil deepen further too, thanks to a new duet with Ana Carolina, "Um Sueno Bajo El Agua," and an all-Brazilian tour, "Solo +," followed by a second Italian leg that also takes in Milan's jazz temple, the Blue Note.

But Civello is now determined to reaffirm her Italian identity, even if it means tackling a repertoire largely removed from her own. Thus comes the idea of a tribute to classic Italian songs, one that nonetheless retains a cosmopolitan spirit, helped along by analogue recording sessions held around the world, between Bari, New York and Rio de Janeiro. Brought in to oversee the project is Nicola Conte, the DJ and producer known for blending jazz with club culture. And it's precisely that trademark sound that drives Songs (2014), an album that's inherently chaotic and eclectic by nature, featuring no fewer than 17 covers of Italian songs spanning from the '60s to the present, originally performed by artists such as Mina, Rita Pavone, Lucio Battisti, Gino Paoli, Sergio Endrigo, Paolo Conte, Vasco Rossi, Vinicio Capossela, Subsonica and others. The whole repertoire is thoroughly blended and reinvented, mixing bossa nova with northern soul, latin jazz with blue eyed soul. Adding an extra international touch is the participation of some high-profile Brazilian friends, including Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque, Esperanza Spalding and Ana Carolina, who duet with Civello on, respectively, "Io che non vivo senza te," "Io che amo solo te," "I mulini dei ricordi" and "E penso a te." The sonic architecture is arranged by Eumir Deodato and performed by the Prague Symphony Orchestra; the lineup of musicians is rounded out by Swedish saxophonist Magnus Lindgren, Finnish drummer Teppo Makynen, bassist Luca Alemanno, pianist Pietro Lussu, Gaetano Partipilo on alto sax, and Brazilian guitarist Guilherme Monteiro, who has stood alongside the Roman singer-songwriter since her debut.

For the first time cast purely as an interpreter, Chiara manages to shape her silky voice around widely varied arrangements without losing the elegance that defines her (just take "Una sigaretta," or Morricone's bossa nova "Metti una sera a cena," as examples), although the album's excessive length (70 minutes) and the choice of songs - already heavily overused and covered by other Italian artists - take away some of the record's appeal, making it, in this writer's view, the least compelling entry in her catalogue. The artist herself clearly sees things very differently: right after its release, she expressed nothing but excitement: "I couldn't have dreamed of anything more - it's the album I wanted to make, with the songs I wished I'd written, and a sound that winks at the past while looking to the future, and to an Italy, like today's, full of promise. Gil, Chico, Eumir, Nicola, Ana, Esperanza pay tribute to Italian music with thrilling freshness."

Adding to the aesthetic of the project is the ironic (and iconic) cover image, a tribute to actress Florinda Bolkan in the film "Metti, una sera a cena."

On the Italian charts, Songs does well, but not spectacularly, soon slipping behind Emma and company. Civello, however, has another smart instinct: she realizes that this tribute to all things made in Italy can become an excellent international calling card, cementing her role as an ambassador for Italian song around the world. Starting with the United States, where the album is released under the Sony Music label, debuting - by choice of New York mayor Bill de Blasio - at the Italian Heritage Celebration in the historic setting of the Metropolitan Museum. An intricate US tour follows, with four sold-out dates in New York, Boston, Miami and Washington. Not bad at all.

L'alba nell'Eclisse

After filing away yet another notable duet - with Sergio Cammariere on the Latin-tinged "Con te o senza te" - Chiara Civello embarks on a project that marks her definitive leap in quality, Eclipse (2017). It's a record to be sipped slowly, like a glass of brandy, blending covers and quality new material contributed by some of the leading names in Italian pop, such as Cristina Donà, Francesco Bianconi (Baustelle), Dimartino, Diana Tejera and Diego Mancino. Recorded between Paris, New York, Rio de Janeiro and Bari, it rests above all on a spot-on production choice: Marc Collin of Nouvelle Vague brings his retro-futurist arsenal of keyboards, moogs, drum machines and electric organs, forging an electropop shell that suits her usual bossa-lounge-pop yearnings beautifully. It's a measured, impressionistic use of electronics, one that manages to modernize structurally "classic" songs, adding an eccentric flair capable of stripping away the slightly mannered gloss that was perhaps the main flaw of Civello's earlier productions.

In the contest among the songwriters, the surprise winner is the less celebrated Mancino, who delivers two melodic gems perfectly suited to the Roman singer's voice: the opening "Come vanno le cose" and "Qualcuno come te." The first is a postmodern bossa nova in the style of Gal Costa, superbly arranged with Collin's French touch, Franco-Algerian guitar and Refosco's Brazilian percussion. The second is one of those rumpled-bed, post-breakup-torment ballads that once would have made the fortune of Mina (does "L'importante è finire" ring a bell?) or Ornella Vanoni, and Chiara seals it with a performance worthy of such muses, helped along too by an irresistible sensuality that once earned her the label of "aphrodisiac to be taken under medical supervision" (see Camillo Langone, "Il Foglio").

But the rest of these "composing duets" don't disappoint either: on "Cuore in tasca," Dimartino indulges Civello's soul leanings and her theatrical stylistic flights over a soft bed of vintage organ; Bianconi's rarefied "New York City Boy" is a dim hotel room reflecting muted flashes of jazz-blues; Tejera's "La giusta distanza" stages a more classic soft-pop number, with Vanoni still lurking just around the corner; while "To Be Wild" (Donà) is a lovely declaration of female independence, seasoned with a poignant melody and delightfully electro-lounge arrangements.

The film-music section is also substantial, retrieving some real gems, like an intimate guitar-and-voice version of "Amore, amore, amore," written by Alberto Sordi and Piero Piccioni; a velvety "Quello che conta," which brings back to light the beautiful theme performed by Luigi Tenco and composed by Ennio Morricone and Luciano Salce for the film "La Cuccagna"; and finally a disorienting electro-funk reinterpretation of "Eclisse Twist," which Michelangelo Antonioni wrote with Giovanni Fusco for Mina's voice. And speaking of the Tiger of Cremona, there's room for one of her classics, "Parole parole," which becomes an occasion to build a bridge between Italy and France over the embroidery of a Crumar organ, also evoking the French version by Dalida and Alain Delon, set in a jazzy mood (with fine flute touches from Alfonso Deidda).

The inevitable tribute to Brazil, meanwhile, takes shape in the breezy sambalanço of "Sambarilove" (co-written with Roubinho Jacobina) and in the playful "Um dia," in which the singer trades lines with Pedro Sá (Veloso's guitarist) on the contradictions of those born under the sign of Gemini, who want one thing one day and something else entirely the next.

With Eclipse, then, Chiara Civello completes her journey of reconnection with her Italian roots, while at the same time definitively cementing her refusal to bow to homegrown trends (it's the songwriters who bend to her style, not the other way around), her perennial international calling as a musical mind in flight, which here finds the best possible ally in Collin. If with Nouvelle Vague the French musician had managed to turn even new wave classics into fluffy bossa nova bonbons, when faced with the singer of "Last Quarter Moon", the road ahead was, in a sense, already downhill. All that remained was to add that pinch of irony, lightness and unpredictability needed to smooth away the last academic residues of an artist forged by the rigid Berklee College of Music in Boston. Mission accomplished.

Having reached the peak of her career with Eclipse, Chiara Civello focuses mainly on live shows and a series of collaborations that take her to "her" Brazil too, where she ends up effectively trapped, in forced exile due to the pandemic, isolated in her home/studio devising new songs and new international hybrids. The first to be released, chronologically, is a reinterpretation of the vast heritage of French song, in which, inevitably, Collin's hand is once again at work.

La chansonnier

Chansons (2021) risked being a mere revival of classics from across the Alps that never went beyond tribute or calligraphic exercise. But, with the help of her trusty producer, already well versed in covers thanks to the Nouvelle Vague experience, the Rome-born chanteuse of Sicilian blood found a twofold way to dodge the trap. First of all - as she told us in this interview - by narrowing the field to those great international standards that few know to be the work of French pens; secondly, by putting herself entirely in the hands of Collin's musical vision, a wizard of chiaroscuro atmospheres with a retro-futurist and often subtly exotic taste. The result is a collection of songs in which Chiara plays the orthodox one and Marc the troublemaker, often overturning the original sonic blueprint. A case in point is the single "La Vie En Rose", which preceded the album, where Civello's light vocals, fluttering softly between the notes, are set against an ensemble intent on pounding out a driving rhythm. Even more effective is the rendition of Charles Aznavour's poignant "Hier Encore", translated into a funky "Yesterday When I Was Young" that replaces melancholy with languid sensuality.

The most inspired moments are precisely those where Chiara and company seem to let themselves go, having fun upending the original blueprint with a calculated mix of craft and improvisation. Take, for instance, the evergreen "Un uomo, una donna" ("Un homme et une femme") by Francis Lai, turned into a fizzy, Nouvelle Vague-style cocktail, all frivolity and sparkle; or the recovery of the original sonic core of "Pour Toi", written by Loulou Gaste in 1956 for the film "Le Feu Aux Poudres" and reincarnated 20 years later in Morris Albert's hit "Feelings", with its melodic line left intact (along with the resulting legal battle, eventually won by Gaste).

Elsewhere, the playfulness gives way to greater restraint, aimed at bringing back to light the austere elegance of the originals, as in the heartfelt "Col tempo", a tribute both to Léo Ferré's original and to Gino Paoli's successful cover, the soundtrack to little Chiara's car rides with her father down to Sicily, to her Modica. Jacques Brel's "Ne me quitte pas" also looks primarily to Patty Pravo's Italian version ("Non andare via"), though without retaining that streak of lucid melodramatic madness that permeated the Venetian artist's spoken-word delivery. To the ostrich feathers (which she does wear in the "La Vie En Rose" video) of theatricality and histrionics, Civello prefers the velvet and silk of jazz orchestras, and perhaps it's asking too much to expect that extra dash of extravagance that simply isn't in her nature.

In any case, the classic poise of interpretations such as "Que reste-T-Il De Nos Amours?" (Charles Trénet), "I Will Wait For You" ("Les parapluies de Cherbourg") by her favourite composer Michel Legrand (on whose notes she passed her audition for a scholarship to Berklee College of Music at just 16), and of "My Way" itself - stripped of its Sinatra-style crooner bombast and brought back to the subdued melancholy of the original "Comme d'habitude" by Claude François and Jacques Revaux - is yet further proof of the class of a singer in a league of her own. Stubbornly out of step with the trends of the current Italian music scene, yet free nonetheless. Free enough, even this time, to say I did it my way.

In 2023 Civello releases a new single co-written with singer-songwriter Kaballà ("Sono come sono"), an Italian-language reworking of a Brazilian hit by Sandra de Sá ("Olhos Coloridos") that became an anthem of the fight against racism, turning it into a sleek funk number that bans all forms of discrimination.

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