10 Q’s with DANIELE LIVERANI
Daniele Liverani is known as the keyboard and musical mastermind behind Twinspirits, Genius Rock Opera and Khymera. But now he has a new solo album ‘Eleven Mysteries’ out now on Lion Music. Over to Daniele…
1. What are you currently up to? (recording, gigs, plans etc.)
D:At the moment I’m very busy with the promotion of the new guitar album “Eleven Mysteries”, doing interviews, and web promotion, usual stuff that are done for each release.
But I’m currently also writing new music for a new rock opera that I’m going to be involved for a while.
I have no gigs at the moment planned, but hopefully some will be scheduled in support of this new album soon!
2. Could you take us through the new album “Eleven Mysteries”? (e.g. ideas behind the songs etc)
D:The concept behind “Eleven Mysteries” album came out from many reading and analysis I did recently on various booksand arguments that I approached regarding life. I’m talking
about philosophy books, ancient and modern, books about ancient civilizations, mysterious stories about glorious civilizations of the past, and different great writers and philosopher of many cultures, both in a stoical perspective or narrative perspective.
I extracted from these readings some of the basic and most interesting concepts that jumped to my attention regarding life approach, life principles and spiritual concepts, and
I tried to organize them in a musical journey that runs through all of them.
All the songs are about some of the most important moments and aspects of our life, all the experiences that all we are going through during our life time and the mysterious aspects that are often hidden behind these experiences, choices, life styles and life events.
From these experiences we all are able to learn a a lot, and possibly express these experience to others, using art for example, like music. That’s the main aim of the concept of this album basically, an attempt to express and share some of the most interesting
and mysterious concept I ran through my latest reading and researches, trying to transform them in music that could express the feeling of those messages.
3. Are there any plans to play live shows backing the new album’s release? Would you perhaps do a one-off showcase of the album and record it for DVD or YouTube?
D:I’m working on it, that would be awesome for sure! The problem with this is that musicians involved are very far from each other, bass is from Colorado USA, drummer is from south Italy…but let’s see what will happen!
What we already did is record separately some tunes and we will released it on YouTube in split screen form, one is already available, it’s the opener song “Mysterious Impulse” that
can be found at this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dv398wnWHU
4. What is happening with Khymera? How did you get Steve Walsh involved in the first album?
D:The latest news about my AOR musical side is that I formed a new line up called “PRIME SUSPECT”, and I’m not involved in KHYMERA any more. Dennis Ward is moving on with Khymera with a completely different line up.
We released a self titled album back in late 2010 for Frontiers, that has been licensed in Japan too. Basically Prime Suspect has the same drummer and guitar player of Khymera (Dario Ciccioni and Tommy Ermolli) plus bassist Mauro Catelani and singer Olaf Senkbeil (Dreamtide) and me on keys, and the difference with Khymera is that I write the
material on this new situation, the Khymera was basically all songs penned from the Martin brothers and other external songwriters. It has been a great experience to be able to produce and arrange all those songs, but I love to write and it’s cool to have the creative part active in this new Prime Suspect situation.
The meeting with Steve Walsh took place when he sang the character “King Wild Tribe” on my Genius Rock Opera episode 1 back in 2001, I was able to contact him through the staff of Frontiers records that has been of course crucial in the building up of the whole rock opera production. His contribution to the genius rock opera was awesome, he
had lot of fun doing it and from there we ended up in working together on a full length album that was the debut of the Khymera project. It was great to work with him, his
singing is really incredible and it was thrilling to have to opportunity to work with such a music legend.
5. Were you pleased with the reaction to Twinspirits latest album “Legacy”? How do you manage to divide your time between this and your other musical works?
D:I was very happy with the reaction to Twinspirits – Legacy album. It was a though album to produce, I put really a lot of time and dedication to it, the production took almost 1 year in different moment. I think that the album turned out well, and I was happy to hear good reaction on it of the press and fans, it will be surely a mile stone of my productions, I’m very fond of it.
My musical journey is constantly switching focus from a project to another, this is how things are happening, and mostly depends on how things are settling in terms of bands members availability, my personal musical needs in terms of what kind of expression mood I’m in that moment and of course relationships dynamics that are constantly developing and changing due to life changes and evolution. I usually have a good sense of organization and It’s not difficult to divide my time from all these different situations. I’m very active and I’m very focused in what I do, so that’s a starting point.
6. How do you think the live music scene may look in five to ten years’ time given the fact that a lot of the 70′s and 80′s bands will have stopped touring by then?
D:Well, I think that all musical styles will always continue to live in the future, since there’s a lot of young bands that are continuing on the steps of their father bands. Of course the originals won’t be there anymore, and that’s gonna be a change for sure…but there will always be 80′s rock ‘n’ roll bands around among the new generations… and this will keep the style alive.
7. As you have done a lot of musical arrangements on albums have you any plans to go into film or TV soundtracks? What for you are the key ingredients that make for a successful musical arrangement on say a rock opera or progressive rock song?
D:It’s something that always appealed to me, working on the film scoring. I’m great film fan, I always go to the cinema when I have time and it’s one of my major passions together with music. I’ve been doing something here and there in the field, but nothing really professional I’d say…let’s see if some opportunities will arise.
I think that the arrangements are something very personal. Of course there are some rules or basics that should be learned and used to create nice and appropriate arrangements, but there are a lot of personal taste involved. Difficult to find out the real good ingredients for a
winner arrangement, every situation is different and requires different approach.
I’d say that when you fell that the overall picture works, when the message is coming through, when the feeling you wanted to express is coming out of the music and when everything is balanced according to the moment in the musical picture, that’s the right arrangement…but again, it’s always a challenge, cause we all hear and experience music in a different way and it’s impossible to find real rules or recipes.
8. Has the internet helped you get your music out there or has it in some ways hindered it by websites offering free downloads? Do you still rely heavily on CD sales as opposed to download?
D:I think internet had 2 faces as all innovation have, the positive one is the possibility to expose your music to the whole world, the negative one, the increasing illegal download that is killing the business, and there fore the possibility to make music at a
professional level.
9. What made you want to start making music and who have been your musical influences?
D:I was always interested in music, I started playing piano when I was 6, at the beginning I was of course more involved in classical music, my training comes from there; then I switched to rock music when I was a teenager, approaching guitar. My first
influences were of Ac/Dc, Van Halen, then Malmsteen, Steve Vai and all great guitar players that I got to discover in the my early guitar days.
I was then flashed from Dream Theater that became a huge influence on me since the early nineties. I think what really made me start making music is something that is embedded in my personality and has always been there. I think it’s a natural attitude and passion that comes fromDNA, and inevitably comes out while you grow up.
10. What do you enjoy doing in your time away from music?
D:I’m a great film fan, I go very often to the cinema and I love programming computer as well, that’s another passion I always shared with music.
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