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Emy
Persiani Singing Jazz and Pop with Italian Passion |
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From an early age
Italian singer Emy Persiani seemed destined for a career in music. She
is the daughter of preeminent composer and pianist Cesare Persiani who
also performed with some of Italy’s most highly acknowledged artists
including conductor, arranger and musician Cinico
Angelini, Pippo Barzizza (composer, conductor, arranger and music
director), singer and actor
Alberto
Rabagliati (The Barefoot Contessa,
Montecarlo and
Il Vedovo,
The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t
– as Santa) and songwriter, musician and band leader Gorni Kramer.
About one of the people her father performed with Emy Persiani says,
“You probably know Gorni Kramer (She
sings a song in Italian). He is very famous in Italy and I don’t
know if he is famous in America, but it is a kind of Swing after the
Second World War made (famous in Italy) and my father played piano for
him.
(During) that period there was kind of a mirroring of the music between
Italy and America. My father played lots of Swing, so he was Classical
and Swing together. This influenced me very, very, very deeply,” says
Emy Persiani.
That influence lived on with the formation of the Italian Café Trio.
“The Italian Café
Trio is something that I created in loving memory of my father, because
it expressed all of my freedom in Jazz. I agree with the people who say
Jazz is a kind of freedom within the rules. You have a pattern and then
you immediately use all of your fantasies to break that pattern.
This is something very appealing for my character, because I like
very much to create and to do things differently, not in the same way
every time. For (instance) to (sing) “Autumn Leaves,” there will never
be two “Autumn Leaves,” the same, sung by different people.
Every time there is the freedom of creating the note outside of
the road that you normally must follow. The first time you sing the
theme, the melody like it must be sung and then you create and go crazy
like (here she vocalizes) and
that is a really good freedom and a great sensation to do that.
That is why I
really love Jazz and that is what I reserved for the Italian Café Trio,
because it is just having fun together with the musicians. There is a
kind of ask and answer between the piano and the voice, between the
piano and the bass, between the drum and the voice. It is an exchange of
happiness. Notes, yes, but it is an exchange of happy sensations.
Jazz for me is Swing mainly. There are also Jazz melodies that are sad,
“Nature Boy,” for example, “Mona Lisa,” or “My Funny Valentine,” they
are very sweet and sad songs, but Jazz for me is Swing. My father was a
very cheerful man, not a sad man and I want to recover that part of
Jazz.
We already have so
many problems to think about in real life and I think music must reserve
for itself the role of carrying us away to another dimension, which of
course is better than the real one otherwise you don’t need music to go
sad like you are. Sometimes
it is also good to listen to some sad sensation to listen to your black
part inside, which is not so bad in the end. Mainly in this time, I see
that the Italian people want to forget the economic crisis. It is kind
of a third post-war period in my opinion. Now the economy worldwide is
going in the wrong way. It is going down. People want to forget all of
the financial problems, the crime and the war that is around the world.
When people go to shows they want to forget, they want to entertain
themselves and to feel the joy. They want to get back into contact with
the joyful part of themselves, because life sometimes makes you get
lost.
The Italian Café Trio is a Jazz band in which I go back in a way to the
music of the forties and the fifties in Italy. It is playing on two
parallel streets, the music that was at the time in Italy and the music
that was in America. It is very interesting how different they are.
Secondly, it is a way of remembering my father and his importance,”
explains Emy Persiani.
I must say one thing that is very, very important. I played the piano
when my father was alive and he taught me very difficult pieces of
music, Classical and even modern music and with my small hands. I was
seven years old and I could play Op. 69 No. 1 by Fredrich Chopin with my
small hands, because he taught me how to (position) them on the
keyboard. I was so happy about that I continued to play and tried to
repeat some music that I heard. I trained my listening capacity.
All of the time that I passed through high school and university my
father was in the other room in my house and he was playing Rachmaninoff
or Chopin or whoever on the piano, while I was making my studies. It was
a soundtrack for all of my life. I composed about thirty or thirty-five
compositions as well, which unfortunately when my father died, all of
this kind of stuff, my music, my composition and my playing the piano
died with him. When he died I was traumatized badly and I (fell into)
bad depression. I was very, very sad and I stopped with music.
When my father died in 1981, I was about to marry Luigi and I just
waited one year to respect the moment. I had been engaged for ten years.
I was very, very young. It was a very long and old fashioned engagement.
We married and I forgot all about music. I became a happy mother of two
wonderful children (her first
child was born in 1984) and I became a teacher. My degree is in
literature and foreign languages.”
“I
have lived three lives the first life was as a pianist and a student,
the second as a mother and a teacher and the third as a teacher and a
singer, which is very strange. The career and by that I mean the first
time that I was paid for it was around fifteen or sixteen years ago. The
reason is very important and it is not something that just happened by
chance. It came out late, but it was always there. In the first part I
was expressing the music that I had inside with my compositions and then
I passed all of the years from 1982 to more or less 2000 (without
music).
I started singing in karaoke sessions, just to have fun with friends.
(They would say) you are very clever to sing, go Emy and sing, so I went
and sang, but only for pleasure. I was not thinking of becoming a
singer. All of the years in between passed, because I had to (come to
terms with) my father’s loss. Every time that I heard music I went into
tears, because I always thought of him. I couldn’t move forward.
I couldn’t overcome all of that and I put away playing the piano.
Unfortunately, I forgot most of the things that he taught me. This is my
biggest sorrow. I want to recover all of that.
In these years I was a teacher and mother from 1984 to 1996. My daughter
was six or seven years old when I went to this karaoke bar or
restaurant.
I am a singer, because of my husband. My husband had lived all of my
music history. He was always surprised, because when we were engaged we
went to the cinema together and when I went back home I put my hands on
the keyboard and I played the soundtrack of the film that I had seen. It
is a very big gift. He was amazed every time about it. That is why he
has always had adoration for my musical part. He has always adored all
that is music in me from the start until now. In 1987 he enrolled me,
without me knowing that, underline without me knowing that to a singing
contest, a karaoke contest. There were about 150 contestants and I won.
(The prize was) a trip for two to the Caribbean. He enrolled me, because
he saw how I transformed myself, while I was singing and he wanted to
find the “old” Emy that he knew while she was playing the piano when she
was sixteen years old. He was there. He wanted to recover that Emy.
That’s the beginning of the fairytale,” she says.
Today Emy Persiani lives in the small and ancient city of Marino, Italy,
which traces its origins to the first millennium. Marino is just
thirteen miles or twenty-one kilometers southeast of Rome where Ms.
Persiani’s family roots are deep. She grew up in Rome, her parents grew
up in Rome and her grandparents lived in Rome. She is proud of that
heritage and part of her music repertoire is dedicated to paying tribute
to the music of the Romans, including iconic Folk singer Gabriella
Ferri.
About Gabrielle Ferri, Emy Persiani says, “She was not only famous in
Italy, but in South America as well. Gabriella Ferri was a very
spontaneous singer from the Roman tradition and she was born in Rome.
She made a very important contribution to music, because she
transformed Roman traditional songs into very modern (music) in the
seventies.
It was a very important thing to do, because in the sixties and in the
first years of the seventies when she was famous, music was still
repeating the old fashioned things.
Just ten years before Gabriella Ferri, we had the post-war music and
she changed all of that tradition into a modern one.
She was very ahead of her time.
Then there was
something that happened that was very sad in her life. Musical fashion
changed suddenly in the eighties, because of the technology and new
sounds in music. She was
not right for the times, so she lasted a very short season in the
seventies and then she was abandoned by the music industry.
That’s why she (fell into) a very deep depression and she couldn’t
recover from this depression.
She had been very famous and then she stopped with the performances,
exhibitions and records. Unfortunately, she took pills for depression
and there is a controversy about her death. She died in 2004. The
newspapers spoke of suicide, because it is more convenient for the news,
for the gossip. She was probably under the effect of some medicine. She
probably didn’t realize that she was near a window and the window was in
a house that was (located) on a cliff. Even if she had fallen from the
second or third floor she probably could have saved herself if there had
not been a cliff. It was impossible, because she fell down very deeply
and then she died.
In my opinion she didn’t commit suicide, because the day after (her
death) she was to have a very important appointment for a television
documentary. She wanted to go to that meeting.”
Although, Emy Persiani never met Gabriella Ferri, Ferri’s sister has
attended a half dozen of Persiani’s tribute concerts. Persiani’s
perception of Ferri is that of a warm hearted woman who was very
passionate and one whom she describes as a complete artist, who in
addition to her singing was also an accomplished poet and painter.
Two of the songs that are often associated with Gabriella Ferri and are
included in Emy Persiani’s tribute to her are “Barcarolo Romano” and
“Sinno’ Me Moro.”
“(The song) “Barcarolo Romano,” is one of the most traditional songs
Gabriella Ferri interpreted.
Many Roman singers before her gave an interpretation of “Barcarolo
Romano.” It is a traditional song about a love story that ends in a
tragic way, because Barcarolo
Romano means a Roman sailor like a (gondolier) in Venice. This man
is in his boat and his job is to carry people along the river from one
bank to the other and he falls in love with a girl. Eventually, they
split and he leaves her. She commits suicide underneath his boat in the
river.
“Sinno’ Me Moro,” is the desire of the female lover of not being
forsaken otherwise she is going to die. “Sinno' Me ’ Moro,” in Roman can
be translated as otherwise I am going to die or if you leave me I shall
die,” she says.
In 2009 Emy Persiani appeared in the lead role of a theatrical
production, Solitudini that
she also produced and it told the tragic love story of Italian Pop
singer Luigi Tenco and one of Italy’s most successful artists, Italian /
French singer and actress Dalida (Yolanda Gigliotti). Persiani played
the role of Dalida.
“It is a very
dramatic story, because she was Luigi Tenco’s lover and she committed
suicide for him. This is true. They both committed suicide, but his was,
because of a storm inside of his soul. He was a much tormented singer
and person. She was deeply linked to Luigi Tenco, but she was very
different from him. He was
an outsider and she was the diva who was very famous in France and in
Italy. When she sang she dressed in wonderful, brilliant dresses and she
had big shows. He was the singer of the protests and rebellions. They
were two very, very different people.
There is a big controversy (about whether or not Luigi Tenco committed
suicide). There are some political forces pushing towards a theory that
says he was forced to kill himself for political reasons. It is a very
complex thing and I don’t want to say things that are wrong. Anyway, he
was found dead and that is what we say. She committed suicide throwing
herself from the window (many) years after Luigi Tenco’s death.
I produced this on the (basis) of a theatrical text composed by an
author who trusted me as an actress. I had never been an actress.
Someone taught me how to do it, because the person who interpreted Luigi
Tenco was a singer and an actor. The show was a mixture between acting
and singing. It was dramatic. It was about two people who were not
watching themselves, because Dalida was talking to Luigi when Luigi had
already died years before. She was alive and she was talking to his
ghost. The two people on stage are one alive, me as Dalida and the other
Luigi Tenco who is acting and singing, but he is a ghost. She is very
intriguing. It is very challenging, because you have to look at the
audience without ever looking at the other actor. I was pretending I was
alone on stage all of the time. Then when I commit suicide at the end of
the theatrical show I walk to the actor at the other side of the stage
and take him by the hand. I sing the final song with him, because we are
united again in heaven,” says Emy Persiani.
In 2009 Emy Persiani was also asked to perform at the benefit concert
Teatro Verdi Montecatini Terme, under the musical direction of her
friend, Dutch Jazz singer Edith Alberts.
One year prior to the Tenco / Dalida theatrical production, Emy Persiani
was a regular member of a television talk show that featured the host
and pianist Alessandro Alessandroni (also known for the popular musical
variety show Canzonissima).
She says, “Alessandro called me (to appear) as a teacher and a singer
and let’s say as an expert of English lyrics. Expert is a big word.
Anyway, I could translate for the audience what English or American
songs said. I was on this TV show with other experts, real experts, for
instance who were psychologists, lawyers or people from show business
and we commented on a subject each time and each week there was a new
episode. Each episode had a main theme, for instance self-esteem or
spring (the season) or divorce. People would talk about the subject from
their point of view. It was very interesting for me to be in the double
role. I had to explain the lyrics,
before singing with Alessandro who was on the piano. It was a very good
experience.”
Another part of Emy Persiani’s musical repertoire is her tribute concert
to Whitney Houston.
“Whitney was the
real diva. She became famous in the eighties and this is not a reason
that should be forgotten, because the best part of my life was starting
in the eighties. I was making a new life. I got married in the eighties,
I had children in the eighties and I was having my time, as it says in
the song, because I was free from the control of my mother at last. I
was having a family of my own, which I adored and that I adore now. The
sounds of Whitney Houston’s music and the lyrics of her music are the
perfect mirror of my happy period.
The second reason (for the tribute) is that I understand the lyrics and
I love what she says in her songs “All the Man That I Need,” just the
title is a whole speech. I love many other songs. I love the spiritual
songs. Like millions of people I love her way of singing. Many people
say, oh you want to show your voice and that is why you choose Whitney
Houston and that’s not the reason. When she sang it was not, oh look at
me, I am doing this note. She was looking at the people with the same
love she was looking at her daughter and I share this way of behaving in
my concerts. That is what I like about Whitney and that is what I wanted
to share with my audience when I make the tribute otherwise it would
just be an exercise, like just look at me I can go (at
this point she sings some very high notes and demonstrates very good
vocals), so it’s a high note and what else? It is only about being
warm when you sing that note and look people in the eye, because you are
singing out of your soul,” she says.
About sixteen years ago Emy Persiani returned to music, an important
part of her life, a love that was inspired by her father and that was
rekindled by her husband Luigi. During our conversation you could sense
the passion as she talks comfortably now about sitting beside her father
as a seven year old, while he taught her how to position her tiny hands
on the keys, so she could play and later compose music that many much
more experienced, formally trained and far older people than she was at
the time, could not master.
Just south of Rome, Italy in the ancient city of Marino is a musical
treasure just waiting to be discovered by music aficionados from other
countries. Her name is Emy Persiani.
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