Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

After Alice & Battiato joined forces after 30 years with new recordings and a highly succesful tour in 2016 another Italian Eurovision couple returns after 30 years, too: Umberto Tozzi and Raf have released a new song, Come una danza , re-recorded Gente di mare and remastered their other hits in a double-CD to be released late November and hit the road next spring in Italy and Europe. 

Sanremo has its special night tonight. While the competition continues for the remaining newcmers and those Big in risk of elimination the other Big take it easy and perform something else. I am most curiously waiting for Bravi's take on Battiato and Zarrillo's Bosè! It's going to be an interesting night!                                      Al Bano - "Pregherò" ( Adriano Celentano )                    Alessio Bernabei - "Un giorno credi" ( Edoardo Bennato )           Michele Bravi - "La stagione dell'amore" (Franco Battiato)        Lodovica Comello - "Le mille bolle blu" ( Mina ) Gigi D'Alessio - "L'immensità" ( Don Backy ) Elodie - "Quando finisce un amore" (Riccardo Cocciante) Francesco Gabbani -"Susanna" ( Adriano Celentano ) Chiara...

Alice will be a special guest in Cervignano Film Festival this week and she will be awarded Saturday a special award for her career, Premio speciale alla carriera Michel Gondry . This festival is for short films, documentaries and videos and the entries come all over the world. Alice will pick up her award with all the other winners of this festival and maybe also perform. A nice birthday gift for her as she turns 60 on Friday! But the more important news is she is releasing her new album still in 2014 it seems! Over the spring and summer we have heard rumors and some news about collaborations (including her apparent exclusion from Sanremo festival with songs written by Franco Battiato) but knowing her times of releasing music ( Samsara was released only two years ago, and that 14 years after Exit , her previous studio album with new material) one has learned to be patient so this news is almost unreal. This will be her 13th album with original songs since 1975. Meanwhile she...

Girl with a pearl earring is maybe one of the most famous paintings in the world along with Mona Lisa . The fascinating painting is from circa 1665 by Dutch Johannes Vermeer. The mystery of the painting has also been transformed into a novel and a very succesful film.  Now she will pay a visit to Bologna's Palazzo Fava from February 8 to May 25, 2014. To welcome her a special event is created in Palazzo Comunale on January 19 and 20 featuring Alice and Francesca Michielin and music by Franco Battiato . He has adapted his music from his Telesio opera, performed only once in 2011 with maestro Carlo Boccadoro, and Battiato also joins Alice on stage in the show's final singing Insieme sul mondo with her.  The entrance is free but one must register here beforehand (until December 16, 2013)

Franco Battiato (66)  is having a pause from his own recording career but he appears regularly lately in albums of other people. He did Il tempo stesso with Tiziano Ferro, Svegliami domani with Cinzia Fontana, La strada with Franco Renga, La stagione dell'amore with Mango, then we have Versus, Carmen Consoli, Milva....  "I'm asked all the time and I'm too soft. If they keep asking eventually I say yes " he tells.  Soon we will see him in Sanremo. "Luca Madonia is a dear boy. He so wanted to go to Sanremo, I don't know why,  and Morandi & Mazzi who pick up the songs for the festival told me it would be much easier if I was involved. So I picked up L'Alieno amongst the songs Luca offered me and sent it. But I enter the song only after three minutes! I don't feel I'm competing but just helping a friend who's in competition. I feel quite like the alien as the song suggests there. I think I will have more fun conducting the orchestra o...

Franco Battiato is organizing a charity concert, Note di merito, in Auditorium Parco della musica in Rome on June 25. He will be joined on stage by Alice, trio Marina Rei-Carmen Consoli-Paola Turci, Etta Scollo, Radiodervish and Roberto Cacciapaglia. The orchestra will be conducted by Paolo Buonvino. Tickets here . Here are some videos from the stars: La cura , Luci lontane , Pirati a Palermu , Musa , Fiori d'arancio , Attraversami il cuore, Voglio vederti danzare , Open your eyes

I came acress a very interesting rare interview given by Alice to Gioia magazine in April 2009, and decided to share some bits of it with you. How did she end to Sanremo in 2000? How her musical choices have effected her career (and income)? What is her relationship with Franco Battiato? And feelings? And what happened in 1984? "At a certain point of my life I wanted to liberate me from being a slave to feelings" Alice explains her latest album, Lungo la strada , her first live album in her career that started over 30 years ago, "I'd rather call it pathos. And after listening the recording from this concert in 2006 I could find the same pathos I had with the audience that night. Often the live recordings are rather clinical, but this was different." And whoever hears Alice singing "io ti proteggeró dalle paure e ipocondrie" in Battiato's La cura , whispering like sister-mother-lover must get shivers. A far cry from the elegant lady sitting ...

Claudio Baglioni, one of the most succesful Italian singers since early 1970's has released his latest work Q.P.G.A. - title coming from his classic and breakthrough song Questo piccolo grande amore - in form of a tour, a book, a DVD and a double CD that features some 70 (!!!) Italian stars, amongst them Alice in Una storia finita and Battiato in Sembra il primo giorno . In fact they just pass the song as Alice comes in only at 4:17 and finishes the song while Battiato starts the next one... The album includes all songs from his original album and about 20 of his other hits, all reproduced with his "today's maturity". Well, it is an idea, I guess.

The voting is on and when I sat down to pick up my top-10 I just realized it is very difficult! My mind was filled with songs, dozens of them and each and every should be in. But can't. So how to pick and choose? Should I try to avoid the obvious? Spread songs from all decades and different countries? Favour the quality over fun? Hard task! In the end I decided to pick up songs that mean something to me, songs that move me still every time I hear them - for one reason or another. And that gives me a string of Italian entries from Non ho l'etá to Era , from I treni di Tozeur to Rapsodia and Questo amore . And some Israeli goodies like Hi , Hasheket shenish'ar , Shara barchovot and The fire in your eye s. How could I forget L'oiseau et l'enfant ? Love shine a light ? Hard rock hallelujah ? Molitva ? Or oldies like Disco tango , Katson sineen taivaan or Io senza te ? Samson ? Amsterdam ? Si tu aimes ma musique or Dschingis Khan that rocked my world back then? O...

Franco Battiato is starting to film a new film based on life of Friedrich Händel. "I have been working on this the past two years. I have read over 70 books on him and searched for an actor to play him. I have found him in Germany. He speaks three languages and plays the piano " the Sicilian artist tells. This will be his fourth film as director/producer. He debuted as a director in 2003 with Perdutoamor that he also wrote. Musikanten , a film based on life of Ludwig van Beethoven was released in 2005 in Venice Film Festival and his third film Niente é come sembra in 2006. He won Nastro d'Argento award for the best new director for Perdutoamor . Meanwhile another production will debut next month in Castello Aragonese in Otranto. A popular opera Ottocento with the music by Francesco Libetta based on Maria Corti's novel L'Ora di tutti . Battiato is the artistic supervisor of the production.

Alice, one of the most important and original voices in the Italian music business returns after six years absense from the recording market with a live album recorded in December 2006 in Basilica di San Marco in Milan. As usual the result is very unique in its style, both for the arrangements and her vocals. She has a trio of muscisits with her: Marco Pancaldi in guitar, Alberto Tafuri in piano and keyboards and Steve Jansen (ex-Japan) in percussions. The twelve songs include her own classics as well Battiato’s Prospettiva Nevski , Camisasca’s Nomadi and songs not available on her studio albums like La cura (also my Battiato), Blue Nile’s Happiness and a song dedicated to late Giuni Russo, A cchiú bella , written by Giuni to a poem by Totó. “People seem to cut my career in periods” she tells in an interview in Sky on March 30 “but I don’t see it that way. It’s a continuous progress, therefor the title Lungo la strada (Along the way). I do agree if my albums Capo Nord and Park Hot...

Rafael De Alba (41) is one of the many artists trying his luck for the second time in the Spanish MySpace selection. He’s a language teacher living in both London and Madrid and also a true Eurovision fan who has travelled to both Helsinki and Belgrade to see it live. His effort for this year, One more chance , has been making its way up the voting lists and is in top-80 in overall voting and top-10 in his category at the moment of writing this. Read in this exclusive interview more about him, his songs and his views on Eurovision. So tell me, who is Rafael? Rafael is a Spaniard who went on a stage for the first time at the age of eight, with a guitar that was too big. After a few attempts at music he studied English at university and became a Languages teacher. So that explains the English..... Sure, and I have lived in the UK for a long time now, I am between Madrid and London I think I noticed the song being recorded in London? Yes, that's right. My friend Hugo did the second...

Franco Battiato has released a new album that completes the trilogy of covers, Fleurs 2. (Yes, Fleurs 1 and Fleurs 3 have been published before Fleurs 2!). It includes amongst others this fantastic Tutto l'universo obbedisce l'amore with la cantantessa Carmen Consoli, fellow sicilian. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxEYzAAEqKY

Franco Battiato finally gets his laurea honoris in modern philology in the University of Catania, his Sicilian hometown where he still lives, on the hills of mount Etna. He was to get that already back in 2005 but was blocked by the students for his comments on the comunal elections and other political bla blas... He released his latest album Il vuoto in spring 2007. He also produced a DVD celebrating the life and career of his friend, forever amazing, late Giuni Russo.

Well, not really very recent news but I found this YouTube video from 1998, when they performed I treni di Tozeur together again 14 years after Luxembourg. Both have been singing the song and re-recording it in various versions on their albums but this was the very first (and last as far as I know) time since 1984 they sung it live togerher. New arrangement, less serious and still wonderful. Watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=897BnrPPNgA&v2