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| Christian Calcatelli in the Guinness Book Christian Calcatelli, a pianist from Rome, Italy, has been officially given the Guinness World Records certificate for the longest solo music internet broadcast. Christian played piano for 60 hours and 1 minute, in aid of The Calx Project, at the Galleria Alberto Sordi, Rome, Italy, on 15-17 September 2004. The event, conceived by Christian Calcatelli and realized with Amsterdam-based creative company Zillion Productions, had the goal of raising the public's awareness of the problems too many children are facing and what all can do to help. This was achieved primarily by merging music and advanced technologies for mass-media communications. “Christian rides on melodies in every mood - from happy to sad changing according to how he felt, according to what was going on around him, within him!” Italian newspaper Il Tempo writes. “His friends were with him, all the public cheered for him - the whole world indeed: passers-by, tourists - everyone was there listening in amazement, and those who just had to leave returned hours later to check on the progress and listen to more music!” Christian's initial interest in music began by discovering the soundtracks that gave life to golden age cartoons from Disney and MGM and, triggered by curiosity, he taught himself how to read music and plunk the first notes on the piano until he began formal music studies at the S. Cecilia Conservatory of Rome. Today, at 25 years of age, Christian has treasured all the teachings received through his studies and made them his own, developing a personal, intimate style of piano playing that suggest sounds and melodies of instruments coming from other lands and times in a modern, appealing way. ”Most of my music is born from improvisation which is a main characteristic of mine, ” Christian says. “It lives from what is around me people, thoughts, and feelings. I like to explore the complete range of colors that the piano can offer primarily because I play the piano as my personal orchestral palette. With today's problems and increasing negativity, my goal is to give someone a positive experience because listening to something can really make a difference, even change one's outlook on life! My life is coherent with my music simple and meaningful, filled with powerful emotions.” One of the pieces that got Christian's interest going in the magic of music-making was a specific recording of the finale of the overture to Rossini's 'The Barber of Seville'. “I get those goose bumps to this day oddly enough from this one specific recording, ” Christian enthuses. “I can now say that I was a classical music nerd it was all I listened to, with a complete disinterest in any other genre. Eventually, other small but important musical influences came to include Spandau Ballet's ”Gold” (with an inspiring final piano lick which haunted me), Liszt, Chopin, Bach and Mozart's piano music, Celine Dion, U2 and others.” After listening and watching nearly 60 hour worth of audio and video recordings oh is work, Christian Calcatelli selected several tracks and brought them together on a two CD collection entitled 'A Broken Record' vol. 1 & 2. These 2 electronic CDs are filled to the brink and are exclusively available from the composer's website www.calcatelli.com as high quality MP3 downloads. write your comments about the article :: © 2006 Jazz News :: home page |