Biography
Alessandra Celletti comes from a purely classical background, but her musical and artistic experiences multiply with sudden deviations in a very personal music world; away from labels, difficult to categorize in existing cliché, her unique and irreplaceable center of gravity is the piano. She made her debut in 1994 with “Les sons et les parfums”, a collection of recordings dedicated to Debussy, Ravel and Satie; In 2006 Alessandra imposed herself also as author with the album: “Chi mi darà le ali” (“Who will give me wings”), although she also remained (and still remains) a valued interpreter of a vast repertoire that includes compositions of Janáček, Gurdjieff/de Hartmann, Scott Joplin and Philip Glass.
In 2007 she published “The Golden Fly”, sixteen compositions for piano solo, followed in 2008 by “Way Out”, an album where the sound of the piano blends with naturalness and balance with the rhythmic power of the drums.
All through these years many have been the collaborations: with the Swedish conceptual artist Paulina Wallenberg Olsson, the saxophonist Nicola Alesini, the British composer Mark Tranmer (aka GNAC) with whom she released the album “The Red Pages”; the free movement of sounds has also made possible the meeting between Alessandra Celletti and one of the leading exponents of contemporary experimental electronic music, Hans Joachim Roedelius with whom, in 2009, she composed the album “Sustanza di cose sperata” (“Substance of things hoped for”), in the same year of “Alessandra Celletti plays Baldassarre Galuppi” an album dedicated to the venetian author of the eighteenth century.
Alessandra Celletti e Hans Joachim Roedelius (Los Angeles – Zipper Hall)
2011 was the year of “Crazy Girl Blue”, the thirteenth album by the Roman pianist, released alongside two very special editions of her compositions; the first one was “Sketches of Sacagawea”, a printed cardboard box containing a book and CD in a limited edition of 200 numbered copies, dedicated to the Native American heroin Sacagawea.
The second special project was conceived with the German surrealist artist Jaan Patterson; Celletti and Patterson co-wrote an album soundtrack that accompanied the release of George Bataille’s previously unreleased book, “WC”, for the publisher Transeuropa.
In the summer of 2013 Alessandra Celletti has been the protagonist of a daring bet, bringing her piano around Italy aboard a truck in the “piano piano on the road” tour. The entire route has become a documentary produced by the independent company Primafilm creative distrinct and it was selected in competition at the Edmonton International Film Festival in Canada, while the trailer was awarded the “Premio Roma Videoclip – Cinema Meets Music”, XXI edition.
In the spring of 2015 Istituto Luce has produced the documentary “Mio Duce ti scrivo”, directed by Massimo Martella, a documentary on the amazing collection of letters that many Italians wrote to Benito Mussolini (the Duce) during the decades of his dictatorship; the original soundtrack was composed by Alessandra Celletti; the documentary, originally broadcasted in prime time for the program “The great history”, on the national tv channel Rai 3, is going to be released as DVD in May 2016.
During 2016 Alessandra Celletti has focused on “Working on Satie”, a project created together with figurative artist Onze. The work was created as a tribute to French composer of which in 2016 marks the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the birth; initially conceived as a live show, Onze and Celletti decided to release a CD and a DVD that have been published on October 26th to coincide with the debut at Romaeuropa Festival.
Alessandra Celletti in “Working on Satie” continues a process that she began in 2000 with the release of “Esoterik Satie”; thealbum received unanimous praise from the critic who called her one of the most reliable interpreters of the composer of Honfleur.
The elements and suggestions, which can be traced in the musical experiments and artistic actions of Satie, become a source of new harmonies that Celletti chooses to investigate;
Onze is a painter and illustrator capable of ranging from traditional techniques to computer graphics, inspired by expressionist painting, pop art, comics and poster art. His videos are intertwined to music on a journey that is an interlocking of melodies and visual similarities.
2018 begins with the composition of the soundtrack of the documentary “In the name of Antea” produced by Istituto Luce and directed by Massimo Martella, dedicated to the history of the works of art during the Second World War, while Alessandra Celletti turns her attention once again to the musical world of G.I.Gurdjeff with her twentieth album, “Sacred Honey”, coming out on April 15th.
