Interview with Filippo Cosentino

1. How did your passion for music and especially for the guitar start?
When I was a child my parents gave to me as a gift one classical guitar. We had a guitar at home because my father loved to play the music that he liked when he was young. So I fell in love with this instrument and its particular sound. I can't remember if I thought “wow! I want to play the guitar” but when I had the possibility to touch my first guitar I could not wait to start to play it! Today I still remember these years as some of the most beautiful of my life and playing music everyday is amazing, and I know I am very lucky for it. I began to love any kind of music: when I was a child, at home there were always tapes of italian and american singers or music of the south of Italy (where my parents were born) and so I moved my first steps playing in a melodic way and I began to think that I love mediterranean music.

2. You performed with many famous artists, can you tell us some experiences?
The first thing that I usually appreciate when I am off on tour with great artists or during recording sessions is their semplicity. When I worked with Girotto and Bosso I had the impression that the most important thing is to play our own music: obviusly this music is the result of the meaning of questions like “where we came from” or “what is our culture”. Rosen, a great saxsophone player, is a beautiful person with sweet words for each of us. During the last recording session that we shared it was necessary to enter the mood to play one of my new song (Dance of the moon in love) and Michael said few things but very cool, so we went back in the recording hall and we could produce good sound and good music. During the years I have learnt that is important to play music in different ways as the great musicians have done this and I am happy when the rewievs say positive things of my music in this way. In an other tour I played with Don Stapleson, you know he is a fantastic saxsophone player coming from Maryland who played also with Ray Charles, Dexter Gordon and Danny Gatton. One concert was in a beautiful hall into a castle and the acoustic wasn't perfect and so he share with us his thought: “we need to play with a great feeling but with the same intensity of the last concert” and the people loved how we played that night. The semplicity in this words is obvious and amazing at the same time but the result was incredible. At the end of the concert Don played Sentimental mood only for his wife who came to Italy for the first time during a music tour. This is the secret: the semplicity and living in semplicity. Last spring I played at an italian festival, Cantautori d'Italia, with a great italian songwriter, Paola Turci. The high quality of her performance was a great lesson for me and for the young music players because great artists continue to study and look for their own personal style who will become what they will be in the future.

3. You worked for theater and cinema, what do they represent for you?
Yes, in the past I worked with Andrea Giordana – a famous italian actor of theatre and television -: it was a reading-concert and It was a great experience, and in the future I hope there will be other occasions to work for theatre. As to the movies, it is different because I met the cinema as a composer in the three last years. When I was a teenager I liked very much to learn the rules of composition and I remebered that I wrote different arrangements of a lot of music and I asked with this scores the director of the orchestra of the my school if we could play it in a concert and sometimes he agreed. Soundtracks must be like pictures and follow the scenes of the movie, and sometimes it happens that the director has some specific requests so the composer must be able to follow the guide line. In this matter I hope to work again because it's a great experience for me.

4. W** hich festival you took part in?**
I played at Cantautori d'Italia Festival, Fara Music Festival, Arter.i.e., Jazzit Fest, Acoustic Guitar Meeting, Maggio dei Monumenti (Napoli), The Hill Music Festival, Bologna Jazz Festival, Suoni dalle colline di Langhe e Roero, Jazz Live, Open World Jazz Festival, Moncalieri jazz, Premio Massimo Urbani, Musicultura, San Giuseppe in jazz, Rassegna “In Acustico” di Monterotondo, Alba Music Festival, and had some tour in Uk and London, Swiss, Spain. As a composer of soundtracks I've been at the short movie festival in Cannes, Trento Film Festival, Roma Film Festival and many others.

5. What is your impression about the festival Jazzit organized in Collescipoli, a small village in Umbria?
Collescipoli is a very nice place: little beautiful places like that are a real treasure for our country and many festival in Italy take place in wonderful towns like it. The Jazzit festival has been for me the occasion to come back to Collescipoli, where I had already been for an interview with Luciano Vanni and Arianna for Jazzit, and to meet again friends that I don't see often maybe because we are on tour in different and far places. I also had the possibility to meet new musicians and I always like to listen to the other concerts when I play in festivals. When I am part of a festival I always have the feeling to be part of something beautiful. The Jazzit festival has gathered a great part of italian jazz creating thus a true meeting without public contributions. Actually in Italy the private industries can help culture more than the public contributions. So we are arriving the era of festivals 2.0: this festival and Luciano Vanni has been great actors of this kind of festival. For the musicians it is always very important to have occasions to share our music.

6. In 2011 Lanes was released, tell us about this project.
Lanes, my first solois album, has been published at the end of 2011. Its tracks are the expression of the musical influences my style had in time: there are songs with classical guitar, electric guitar, loops and the trumpet of Fabrizio Bosso (it's the case of Lanes, the title track), together with more electric tracks like Smokin' jazz and even songs in guitar solo whit the guitar played with open chords. Then there are four jazz standards: Blue Monk by Thelonious Monk, Las Vegas Tango by Gil Evans, Hassan's dream by Benny Golson and Miles Davis' Solar played in a different arrangement from the original, chosen between 12 bars compositions. I've been astonished by the success of some songs like River Avon and by the reviews of the critics: “it looks at Pat Metheny's most inspired ballads” (Jazzit), “Cosentino is a complete musician” (Gerlando Gatto), "Lanes is an accomplished album from a gifted musician" (Tokyo Jazz Notes), “Lanes is one of that cds who take you from the first notes" (miCaribe) and I want to thank all these people who said such good words for my cd. Then I was on tour for a year and a half, having concerts in guitar solo and in trio and I had the occasion to create a trio of my own that is going to follow me in the next tour with the next cd. Lanes is available on the digital stores like iTunes, Amazon, etc and it is also possibile to order it in the stores.

7. Human being is coming out, can you give us a preview?
In this second CD I bring with me the experience of the first one and the results are songs more complete and they represent and display better my music and the process to do it. Human being is almost played with the acoustic guitar and with the baritone acoustic guitar. I choose the title Human being because I wanted to give a sense to the tracks: many things happened in my life and in the world and I wanted to express them in a cd, so that's it. The atmospheres are sometimes misty and elegant – it's the case of Serendipity – and sometimes they remind the music of Middle East like Message in a Bible. Human Being is the core of the disc, the evolution of Lanes, so it has a more present drum and a very melodic theme. In these three songs Michael Rosen played his saxophone in a gorgeous way and the tracks have a great boost and I am truly happy of the work we have done. Dance of the moon in love is a romantic ballad played with the semiacoustic guitar. Then there are three songs in guitar solo, two of them played with the baritone guitar already played in Serendipity. The last song is Letter from home, the only song in ¾ of the cd: a ballad that, together with Dance of the moon in love, I dedicate to my wife and my family. In this disc I also play the piano in Letters from home and in the bonus track. I'm very happy of the result and I know that it comes from the good work of a group of people that I want to thank. Human being is going to be published by Emme Record Label and will be available on the digital stores and in the stores and obviously at the concerts! There are some concerts planned and some of them with Michael as a guest.

8. Is it possible to live only with music?
Yes, of course! It's a question I always answer with pleasure. It's possibile but we have to understand that it's necessary to move in different ways, sometimes even at the same time. So for example I travel for my concerts and record Cds but I also published a didactic method of guitar, and work in recording studio for arrangements and soundtracks. Like every other job we

9. What would you recommend to a young enthusiast person who begins now to touch the strings of a guitar?
Try to have fun from the first touch of the their own guitar and never forget that your own curiosity is the main thing to learn guitar and music.

10. Is there competition in music? And how the market is behaving lately, is it true that the albums are not buyed?
Yes, the competition is very high and often the critic sense forgets that music is not the art of quantity but is the quality the misure of the things. Actually in Italy the students can study music in modern schools with very good or great musicians and so the general level increases. The music business and the discographic industries show us the data about the crisis of the sales of the CDs but I think that we must be able to improve our business and our job every day and try to find new situation to play music and sell it again and again. Personally I am very satisfied about the sales of my first album.

11. What the public loves particularly of you?
People who talk with me about my music say that my music touches their souls (River Avon is mostly the favorite one and Mantra is an another one) and they like a lot my sense of the melody. These things are for me very importants and I hope people love sincerity.

12. How would you improve yourself?
I'd like to be a better entertainer, I like creating a connection with the public that listens interested in my music. As to music I am an inquiring person, interested in different cultures and instruments: I'd like to learn to play a new musical instrument to improve my approach to music.

13. What is the music for you? A source of relief, comfort, the ultimate expression of your creativity... a way to communicate with people...?
Maybe a mix of these things: it's certainly a way to communicate with other people. I like reading but I don't see me as a writer. I like visual art but painting and sculture are very far from me and so music is what I started doing since I was a child and so form me it's natural that music is my way to communicate. As I told before I am an inquiring person about meeting other cultures and new ways of making music and the exchange of views is an important key for growing up. Music has been surge and solace because of some things happened in my life and the result is Lanes and Human being.

14. Are social networks useful for you to be in touch with your fans?
The social networks changed lives and communication of millions of people and we have to learn how to use them. Online I have a Facebook artist page, I have many followers on Twitter, Pinterest, G+ and my videos are shared on YouTube. My website is itself a social network where I keep in touch with other people. As to my personal experience, on the social networks I interact with people interested in different ways in my activity and so the answer is “yes, they're very useful.”

15. De André said "I thought it's nice that where my fingers end up, must somehow begin a guitar", is it the same for you?
Nice quote! Yes, it's beautiful to know that when I have and idea I can make it real with my guitar and discover how it sounds. I must say that sometimes I write also on the piano but in general the feeling of creating music for me is fantastic. Thinking of me without a guitar is like thinking of me without my glasses.