Italian-born, Dublin-based pianist Francesco Turrisi writes for Culture about his 'personal' new solo album, Northern Migrations.
I first started thinking about a piano solo program about 4 years ago, when I got asked to perform a solo concert at the Hugh Lane gallery. I had flirted with that idea for a long time, but somehow was always a bit intimidated by the format.
I am used to collaborating and playing with ensembles that range from very large to very small, but being all alone on a stage is a completely different energy. There is something very introspective about performing piano solo, something about feeling very naked and exposed. At the same time there is the exhilarating feeling of being free to do whatever you want at any given moment. So it's not a coincidence that a personal album such as Northern Migrations came about at a very difficult and transitional period in my life. A moment of big changes, a moment of pain, a moment of letting go of many things dear.
This album is a very deep and personal reflection on many things that have happened in my life until now. It's about migration, about being far from the origins, about the nomadic life of musicians, about not belonging to a place in particular. It's also about separation and loss, about pain and crisis, about grief and about learning to let go.
Northern Migrations is also about the journey that has been my experience as a musician and everything I have picked up on the way. It reflects on my Mediterranean roots, on the modal melodies, instruments and rhythms that connect Sicily with North Africa. It reflects on the early baroque music which I have studied and researched while living in the Netherlands, on the harmonic and melodic ideas behind the music of the great keyboard masters of the 17th century.
It reflects on my visceral passion for jazz, the only music that I have properly studied at a conservatory, on my passion for improvisation and for living the music moment by moment. There are probably too many other influences and connections that I can't individually pinpoint in this music, coming from my constant thirst for finding and understanding new forms of musical expression.
After 12 years of different musical projects and recordings, Northern Migrations represent a distilled version of my entire musical life.
The album was entirely self produced. I believed in this very strongly, as I wanted to realize this personal statement exactly in the way I felt it should have been. I designed the booklet, which is a sort of travel journal, handwritten with sketches, notated musical ideas from which the tunes were developed, and various other forms of text that was inspired by the music. The entire project was realized with the financial support that came from a successful crowdfunding campaign in November 2017.
It was recorded live in one and a half days, in the beautiful Castalia Hall, in Ballytobin Camphill Community in County Kilkenny. The sound of the gorgeous Steinway D piano was beautifully captured by Ben Rawlins using old ribbon microphones.
There is hardly any editing on this album, the tracks are mostly entire takes. They are often not perfect, but they perfectly represent the moment in which this music was created.
Northern Migrations is out now. Francisco launches the album with performances at the Fumbally Stables, Dublin, on Saturday 14th April and Triskel Christchurch, Cork on Saturday 26th May - more details here.
Pictures: Laura Sheeran
