MANCHESTER: Hey! Manchester @ Gorilla

Sunday 19th February, 2017

7:30pm

Event information

Multi-Platinum Italian singer Elisa was only 16 when her raw talent was discovered by music producer Caterina Caselli, who encouraged her to move to the United States to become fluent in English and help her broaden her skills as a songwriter and artist.

In 1996, her debut album Pipes & Flowers was released under Caselli’s label, Sugar Music, and produced by Corrado Rustici. It took only a few months to win important awards in Italy including the prestigious Premio Tenco award (Best Record of the Year awarded by the critics) and the PIM award, the Italian Music Award. Soon after, the album was released in several European countries and Elisa toured throughout Europe as the opening act for international pop star Eros Ramazzotti.

Why did Elisa, an Italian singer, write her songs in English? She wanted to protect her inner world, a world that she herself still needed to understand and consolidate fully. Ironically, English is also one of the most spoken languages in the world and the passing of years has turned this attempt to hide and protect into an opportunity, one that made her music reach more people beyond the Italian borders.

In 2002, Elisa sang at the Winter Olympics closing ceremony in Salt Lake City, Utah and then again four years later at the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, Italy. The same year she also took part in Pavarotti & Friends, where she performed a duet with Luciano Pavarotti. Other performers were Sting, Andrea Bocelli, Zucchero, James Brown, Grace Jones, and Lou Reed.

Elisa’s album Heart was released in November 2009 and immediately topped the Italian album charts. It is Elisa’s sixth studio album and includes 14 songs produced by Elisa herself along with Andrea Rigonat. One of the tracks is an emotional duet with English-born singer- songwriter Antony Hegarty, known best as the lead singer of the band Antony and the Johnsons. A few weeks later it went triple platinum.

At the end of 2012, Elisa’s song Ancora Qui, whose music is by Italian composer Ennio Morricone, was included in the score of the Oscar winning movie Django Unchained, directed by Quentin Tarantino. Ancora Qui was one of the 75 songs eligible for Best Original Song Oscar. The version of the movie was the demo that was initially sent to Quentin Tarantino and was arranged by Elisa herself.

In 2013, Elisa released the album L’Anima Vola. It is Elisa’s eighth album, as well as the first in Italian. All of the songs were written in her language and this step has represented a crucial stage in Elisa’s work of writing songs. Italian was not en enemy anymore. The album debuted at No.1 on the Italian charts and was followed by a long tour that took Elisa to play in Italy and in Europe in 2014. L’Anima Vola Tour came to a conclusion with a sold-out concert at the Arena di Verona, the world-renowned Roman amphitheatre in Verona. Guests of the show were Belgian songwriter Ozark Henry, with whom she recorded a song titled We Are Incurable Romantics, and British songwriter Jack Savoretti.

In 2016, Elisa released the album ON, which features eleven songs in English and two in Italian. It is an album with an international pop feel that once again highlights Elisa’s growth as an artist and as a songwriter able to reinvent herself over the years. No Hero is the first single from the album with a message about bringing out the best in ourselves. It immediately topped the Italian charts. One of the song of the album features British songwriter Jack Savoretti.

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