CHIARA CIVELLO

“Songs are like trains; they take you from one place to another. This collection of songs, I think, is my train home,” says Chiara Sultry voice, poetic lyrics and surprising harmonies are just a part of the recipe that makes Chiara's music so irresistible. The distance she has traveled is both musical and spiritual-literally stretching across the Atlantic Ocean. Born in Rome, Chiara was encouraged to play the piano by her grandmother. When she was sixteen, she began singing professionally and won a scholarship to the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. She enrolled there from 1994-98. By the first year Chiara was a regular on the Boston club scene, performing with different bands. But her journey didn't end with Boston or jazz. Chiara's move to New York City was inevitable. Few days after she had moved to the City she met legendary producer Russ Titelman and left him with a demo of "Parole Incerte." The first song Chiara had ever written. Titelman let president and CEO of Verve hear the song and the next day Chiara was offered a record deal that not only allowed her to enter the studio but made her the first Italian born to be signed by Verve Records. From this series of encouraging and exciting encounters emerged the 10 original compositions included on her debut album LAST QUARTER MOON, Verve 2005; seven written by herself and three co-writes, including the brooding ballad "Trouble" that was co-written with legend Burt Bacharach. Billboard Magazine noted that, “the beauty, charm and allure of singer/pianist/songwriter Chiara Civello’s debut…makes for an auspicious beginning and marks the first revelation of the New Year.” The International Herald Tribune declared “her combination of personality, soulfulness and sophistication…striking.” The second album The Space Between (2007 Universal Classic and Jazz) produced by Steve Addabbo, shows a more intimate and immediate side of the singer songwriter, leading us us through a journey of thirteen beautiful moments where we feel we can get really close to her. “This is a record about ‘the space between’. The space between the notes, the silence between words, the space between me and you, me and my past, me and my future, and all the spaces between that nowadays are so difficult to stop and think about…. Definitely an itinerant soul, Chiara describes her life as:” My home is the world, as long as there’s a piano at the destination, my world fits in a suitcase, the rest I carry with me: my computer and my guitar. “In the first album you search, in the second you focus, in the third you find yourself…. and here I am,” says Chiara Civello in describing her third album titled “7752” of upcoming release. 7752 is the distance in Kilometers from New York City to Rio de Janeiro, the two cities that provided the inspiration for this album. New York is where Chiara lives, while Rio changed Chiara’s life… While visiting her friend, Daniel Jobim, in Rio in February 2008, Chiara was taken to a party (known as SARAU) where artists and musicians of all kinds get together. The guitar went around and everyone sang a song. As Chiara shared, listened, and learned, a new phase of her artistic path began. Ana Carolina, a Brazilian MPB star, is one of the main collaborators of 7752. Not only did she co-write five of the songs with Chiara, but she also played acoustic guitar on most of them. “We met at that party and she asked me if I had a melody for her, so the next day I started RESTA, a song that soon after we finished together and sang as a duet live in Sao Paulo.” Success has already accompanied the collaboration with Ana Carolina, as RESTA will be featured on the new Novela of Globo TV called “Passione,” starting on May 17, 2010. Written between Rio, New York, and Trastevere (Rome), 7752 includes ten musical moments of which eight were recorded in NYC (and produced by the eclectic producer Andres Levin), while four were recorded in Rio and produced by Chiara herself. “All my friends and favorite musicians merged into this record in the most natural way…it was like bringing the Rio spirit into the studio: Mauro Refosco (Thom Yorke, David Byrne, Forro’ in The Dark) and Guilherme Monteiro (Ron Carter, Forro in The Dark) had already recorded with me and I couldn’t possibly think of a record without them, Anat Cohen is one of my best friends and I have always wanted to have her on my album but we never were able to make it happen; Jaques Morelenbaum is one of the most talented and sentimental musicians I have ever met; Mark Ribot was the perfect guy for these songs, not to mention the great rhythm section that Andres brought in the studio, Gene Lake on the drums and Jonathan Maron on the bass. Ana Carolina who wrote most of the songs with me already owned them on the acoustic guitar and added her tremendous groove to them”. Already defined as an “enticing and contagious” album, 7752 sounds lively, while portraying a new, playful and joyous aspect of Chiara’s singing and songwriting. The sound is a beautiful alchemy among the 60s, Italian melody, Brazilian harmonies, and R&B.