One of the most successful musicians on the planet, the ground-breaking composer and pianist Ludovico Einaudi, today reveals the most ambitious project of his 30-year career. This project is the first of its kind for any classical artist.
2019 sees the release of ‘Seven Days Walking’: seven bodies of music to be released over seven consecutive months. The first, ‘Seven Days Walking: Day One’, which interweaves piano and strings in his unmistakable style, is Einaudi’s 14th studio album and will be released on 15th March, on Decca. ‘Seven Days Walking: Day Two’ follows a month later. Each ‘day’ is then released, digitally, a month apart, leading up to ‘Day Seven’ which will be released in the autumn in a box-set of the complete Seven Days.
The first single from ‘Day 1’, ‘Cold Wind’, is released.
Inspiration for the entire project derived from walks that Einaudi would take through the mountains in winter. He explains, "In January last year I often went for long walks in the mountains, always following more or less the same trail. It snowed heavily, and my thoughts roamed free inside the storm, where all shapes, stripped bare by the cold, lost their contours and colours. Perhaps that feeling of extreme essence was the origin of this album."
The first album focuses on several main themes, which then recur in different forms on the following albums – seven variations following the same imaginary itinerary. Or the same itinerary, retraced at seven different times.
Elaborating further, the composer says “In the end I decided to thread them all together in a sort of musical labyrinth, a little like stepping inside the twists and turns of the creative process, to understand how a musical idea can develop in multiple directions, and changing once again at the moment in which it is heard."
‘Seven Days Walking’ was recorded between September and October of last year in Schloss Elmau, Germany and London’s Air Studios, and features the highly talented Federico Mecozzi on violin and viola and Redi Hasa on cello, alongside Ludovico himself on piano.
Einaudi, whose unique musical style is renowned around the world, repeatedly tops the classical charts globally with his hauntingly beautiful and evocative music. With over 1 million streams a day the pianist has clocked up a staggering 2 billion streams, making him the biggest streamed classical artist of all time. Einaudi’s last album, ‘Elements’, released in 2015, saw him become the first classical composer in over 20 years to reach the Top 15 of the Official UK Album Charts.
Einaudi will be playing two live shows at London’s Union Chapel on 28th and 29th March (which sold out in record time once again), and will announce a further string of UK 2019 dates, as part of an extensive global tour, in due course.
‘SEVEN DAYS WALKING: DAY ONE’ is released 15th March on DECCA RECORDS.
Ludovico Einaudi’s music has become some of the most recognisable in the world through its use in films and advertisements, making him the world’s most ubiquitous contemporary composer. He has provided music for numerous films including Shane Meadows’ ‘This Is England’ and the TV sequels ‘This Is England ‘86’ (for which he earned a BAFTA nomination), ‘This Is England ‘88’, and ‘This Is England ‘90’. His music also appears in numerous feature films and trailers, including the Joaquin Phoenix mockumentary ‘I’m Still Here’, the French Oscar nominee ‘Untouchables’ and the multi-award-winning film ‘Mommy’ by Xavier Dolan, as well as regularly being heard on popular weekly television programmes and high profile adverts. Fans include Nicki Minaj, who walks onstage to his music, Iggy Pop, Tom Hiddleston and Ellie Goulding, but to name a few. Championed by BBC Radio 1 DJ Greg James, Einaudi’s music has been sampled by Professor Green and remixed by Mogwai and Starkey. In 2016 the pianist performed on a floating platform in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, specially built by Greenpeace, to raise awareness of global warming.
Described by The Daily Telegraph as a “pianist with rock god tendencies”, Einaudi has performed sold-out shows at the world’s most prestigious venues, including the Roundhouse, Royal Albert Hall, Hammersmith Apollo and the Barbican in London and Lincoln Centre in New York, Waldbuhne in Berlin, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and Sydney Opera House.
He has released 13 studio albums: Time Out (’88), Stanze (’92), Salgari (’95), Le Onde (’96), Eden Roc (’99), I Giorni (’01), Una Mattina (’04), Diario Mali [with Ballaké Sissoko] (’05), Divenire (’06), Cloudland [recorded as the group Whitetree] (’09), Nightbook (’09) and In A Times Lapse (’13), Elements (‘15) as well as three live albums recorded at La Scala (’03), in Berlin (’08) and at the Royal Albert Hall (’10).
Einaudi was born in Turin and trained as a classical composer and pianist at the Milan Conservatorio. He studied under Luciano Berio, one of the most important composers of the twentieth century avant-garde. After some early prestigious commissions in the classical world Einaudi turned his back on what he regarded as an essentially conservative approach to music to embrace his own enthusiasms, which included African, folk and rock music.
Live shows:
28 and 29 March Union Chapel, London
Buy tickets below.
