Chiara Civello Returns to the US with “Eclipse”
After four years, Chiara Civello, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Roman native turned citizen of the world, returns to the United States, the birthplace of Jazz, where she received her formation as a singer and musician.
April 16 at DC’s IIC, April 17 at Boston’s Regattabar. These are the dates of Chiara’s American tour, during which she will present Eclipse, the sixth album of her luminous career, that began with jazz improvisation and continued following the thread of contamination. Her enthusiasm and excitement, Chiara reveals, hasn’t changed since, little more than a teenager, she first appeared on the stages of the East Coast.
Eclipse is produced by Marc Collin of Nouvelle Vague and features covers and new songs made in collaboration with artists such as Francesco Bianconi, Dimartino, Cristina Donà e Diana Tejera. It’s an homage to classic italian songs and to the soundtracks of films from the 1960s and 1970s. The artist’s international pop roots and Collin’s French-Touch (who inserted electric basses and synths in the album) blend with perfection, creating a refined work, minimal and vintage, that in no moment feels cheesy.
Eclipse is an album marked by self-awareness and an adventurous spirit, qualities that have marked Chiara’s career since its very beginnings. “Presenting this album in the United States is deeply emotional because, to me, America means home,” explains Chiara, who at 16 received a scholarship to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston.
It’s by performing in venues across the East Coast that Chiara found her voice: “One of the advantages that the school gave me was the opportunity to meet people who, like me, wanted to live off music,” she reveals. “Together we formed the first groups, confronted with the question every artist faces: will I make it?”
Everything began with Jazz, however, Chiara Civello’s journey has always been marked by the desire to experiment and find new paths. “My academic imprint and Jazz improvisation gave me method, like assimilating as many alphabets as possible, but then, with time, in order to find my own voice, I let go of the rules and arrived at doing what I really wanted: to write songs.”
And write songs she did, traveling the world, measuring herself to different genres and languages, but always bringing her Italian soul along. During her travels in Brazil, the US, in Italy, she had the chance to collaborate with artists such as Burt Bacharach, Esperanza Spalding, Chico Buarque, Gilberto Gil, Mario Biondi.
Tony Bennett, the last crooner, defined her as the “best jazz singer of her generation,” but the artist confesses she didn’t feel intimidated by such a colossal affirmation. “I think Bennett saw in me the freedom of less structured artists, who consolidate their voice album after album, just like an old wine maturing with time.”
And when discussing the future, Chiara reveals that she intends to keep on experimenting. “I’m working on several projects, I would one day like to collaborate with Ryuichi Sakamoto and with African artists. Music to me is a constant discovery, I’m always looking for that affecting moment, the one that provokes emotion.”
With just as much enthusiasm as always, Chiara will perform in New York, in an America that she finds profoundly changed since Donald Trump became president, but that always remains her home.
“The America I knew, the America you find in New York, has nothing to do with Trump’s America. I’m interested in a world that supports and includes minorities, where encounters are celebrated. That’s the kind of music I make.”
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