It is most important that someone believes in you,especially at the beginning.
But let’s go back to late ‘80s.
An evening while I was playing in a club, approached me the young Federico Zampaglione, that was a very talented blues guitarist. Very soon I found myself playing with him in an historical band, Roma Blues Band, before to lose us of sight for many years.
In the second half of ‘80s ‘the label VareseSplas(h)! Records, very active in capturing the sounds of the best Italian jazz, due ti the intuition of one of its producers, Renato Bertossi, decided to make a small series dedicated to Italian blues, featuring musicians who would be a ster in the next decades, like Nick Beccattini, Alberto Marsico and others. In 1989, it was my turn, with an lp self-mockingly named “imaginary Blues” with original compositions some covers that was well appreciated by the critics.
The turning point from ’80 to ’90 has cleaned and removed some energy to that naif roman scene, and although I had closed the decade with the my first record production, something began to sound me bad in that scene. Some big club were opened like the “Classic”, so the idea of people oriented, friendly club began to fade because the people who wanted to listen to music increased a lot and the record labels began to force their productions.
I didn’t like this situation, it was confusing to me, so I continued to get ahead my solo project, but soon I concentrated myself on a project proposed by Francesco Forti, that is a vocal quartet dedicated to afro american religious music, formed by me, Francesco and two female voices, OrsolaFortunati and MicaelaGrandi. It was very surprising. We were called in various radio show and even at Maurizio Costanzo Show.
It was 1990 and to Rome, except for some experiments made by afro american singers based in Rome, we were the absolute first band to take the risk in that musical genre. Even if you consider that the word gospel was unknownto more. It was more known the term spiritual and in fact we called that band Rome Spiritual Quartet and then Rome Spiritual Group. For a decade followed one another very talented female voices, from Daniela Velli, to Barbara Eramo, Tiziana Rosati, Piera Caputo, Etta Lomasto, etc, giving this project an hig visibility in all the country. When in 199 Francesco passed away, the band with the name of Rome World Spirit made a record dedicated to him with the contribution of the singer saxophonist Cristiana Polegri release definitively.
This long experience made me to discover the magic of the harmonized voices along with a strong piano background on the gospel music both for the style both for repertoire, all merged with the blues that was my principal influence. This artistic attitude began to become a professional requirement, so in the ’90 I started to work as a piano background for a lot of afro american singers and vocal band, jumping from blues to soul and gospel.