GIOVANNI ALLEVI presents the album NO CONCEPT

“In my soul I have grown a rose garden, hiding it within a hard shell. Outside, I hung a notice to warn off evil trespassers: NO CONCEPT”

Giovanni Allevi wrote “NO CONCEPT” almost entirely last summer in the period he spent living in Harlem: he wanted to make real contact with the genuine poetry of the new artistic thrusts of New York. He went to America to free himself from the chains of European tradition, to leave his personal history behind him and observe it from a new vantage point.  He grew enthusiastic in seeing so many young people fill contemporary art museums, or sitting by the thousands in a park while watching an old black and white movie, or even applauding a theatre company performing a Shakespeare play to perfection in a parking lot, right next to garbage dumps.

“NO CONCEPT” came into being in those very nights, walking in gym shoes on heated sidewalks, with his “antennas” outstretched in order to receive every possible sound as his fingers throbbed with the talent accumulated from all those years of study.

“NO CONCEPT” is the refusal of that conceptualism at any cost, the same one that negates creativity when the latter holds the vague and pleasing scent of memory. His instrumental music can undoubtedly be referred to as contemporary classical music but only so far as it is music of our age; that is, the music of a composer that aspires to interpret the zeitgeist, just as all composers did before him. And all this, without any forced links or overtones.
In the thirteen compositions of the “NO CONCEPT” album, Giovanni Allevi's desire was to express that Italian melodic sensitivity that has cradled him since at the age of six, when he used to sit cross-legged on the couch listening daily to Turandot, enraptured by it.

“NO CONCEPT” is both a European and Italian record, where melody is inspired by love with all its different facets: from inebriation to dream; from nostalgia to obsession; from self-centeredness to total abandonment. It is a work that spies upon the secret and private rapport between the artist and the piano. The way Giovanni Allevi plays the piano and the sensual love resulting from it, present an intimate relationship: breathing, thrust, wait, passion and commitment.  

”NO CONCEPT” means following one’s own inspiration, without having to pay heed to overtones or economic mechanisms.


GIOVANNI ALLEVI - Songs from the NO CONCEPT album

GO WITH THE FLOW
Emotion must be left to flow: let your existence manifest itself free from obstacles, for nothing belongs to us and all is given.  (G.A.)


CIPREA
The neat drawing and the radiant surface of this shell, recall to mind the African rhythms that inspired this extended melody. (G.A.)


COME SEI VERAMENTE
Whoever is in love has the gift of seeing the other in all their depth, of discovering the intimate beauty even when it is obscured by daily life. (G.A.)


PRENDIMI
Running after each other until suddenly meeting: and then again, fleeing once more. (G.A.)


TI SCRIVO
A letter written with pen and paper in the email era… takes lots of courage. Promise me you will write a real letter.  (G.A.)


REGINA DEI CRISTALLI
The pride of the Renaissance returns upon my fingers: in Music, History is a game where anything can be up to date. (G.A.)


OSSESSIONE
A thousand doors open, the mind seeks thousands of solutions, but there is no way out from the obsession of a face, a memory. (G.A.)


SOSPESO NEL TEMPO
A tear on the garment of time is where fresh thoughts lay. (G.A.)


LE TUE MANI
Of infinite shapes and sensual dances are hands capable, thus revealing intentions and desires that cannot be avowed.  (G.A.)


QUI DANZA
“Here’s the rose, here it dances” (Hegel): in order not to lose itself amidst the clouds of conceptuality the absolute must descend unto daily life, revealing all its splendour in the simplicity of a rose. Dance then, celebrating the smallest things as mirrors of the infinite.  (G.A.)


NOTTE AD HARLEM
They say that from 125th St. onwards, at night-time one should be afraid, that’s why glances veer between fear and curiosity. But the other is a fellow man like me; perhaps it is me that scares him.  (G.A.)

PENSIERI NASCOSTI
Glances speaking of hidden thoughts. (G.A.)

BREATH (a meditation)
I let my body receive the vibrations from the piano’s single notes, from the lowest depths up to the head.  I listen in total silence, in the dark, with the volume turned up loud. For ten minutes I am outside of this world.  (G.A.)