“Everyone tells me I’m sick. I am not sick, mine is a gift. You can explore the world even without being able to see. And then the music speaks to me, that’s the key. It is something so universal and all-encompassing that even “how” it speaks to me cannot be explained. Maybe it’s different for you who see us, music communicates differently, who knows … ».
On the identity card it says that he is 16 years old. But it doesn’t seem like it: Frida Bollani Magoni’s maturity, introspection and clarity of thought are of another age. She cares about both surnames. That of his father, Stefano Bollani, genius of the piano. And that of the mother, Petra Magoni, portent of voice. Not just because she’s taken “exactly halfway” the best of both of them, a shivering touch on the keys, vocal skills as well. But above all why «don’t you find that he has a beautiful musicality, like a tongue twister? Perhaps everything should be written attached: fridabollanimagoni ».
And as he says it he smiles. He does it a lot, often. It’s the first adjective that comes to mind when asked to describe herself: “I’m a smiling girl,” she says. It has always been, even if now it has more reasons: after a performance that left its guest mark on the father’s side a Via dei matti n.0, after having played and sung “for the first time only in Italian” in front of President Sergio Mattarella for the Republic Day (“something that I will carry within my whole life, I was pretty agitated”), but above all now that she is at eve of his first tour as a soloist and protagonist. An 18-date tour «for now only in Italy», which begins on Saturday at the Polveriera Guzman in Orbetello, as part of the «Places of time» festival.
It is his first tour as an absolute protagonist. But the change was not traumatic. Indeed, “very gradual” that she hardly noticed. «At the beginning I accompanied my mother and Ferruccio Spinetti in the Musica Nuda project and they made me do a piece every now and then. Then they began to leave me alone, too, softly and vocally. Over time I have been a guest of my father’s concerts. Then again with my mom I did the opening performance at Musica Nuda last summer. And then three dates alone … Here the third was perhaps the turning point ». Even if the secret dream is to start a band and «sooner or later I’ll do it, even if it’s not the time for now».
Meanwhile, on Saturday we will also listen to one of his songs, the first of an original repertoire that will be made over the years: I’ll miss you. Frida wrote the music. The words instead come from a friend of hers, from Pisa like her, Benedetta Marianelli. They wrote it when they were 14. “We like to think we’ve made a pop song, with a catchy chorus. But also with a twist from the point of view of the chords that … Let’s say that I don’t like songs with the usual four chords on the cross ». He already has difficult and refined tastes. It’s a question of genetics, from both backgrounds. Besides I’ll miss you, in Orbetello – and then on the other dates – we will listen to «all those songs that make me happy and that tell something about me». In addition to a lot of jazz, standards and improvisations, as a worthy daughter of an improviser father. Among the songs that describe it can not miss Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen but also Natural Woman by Aretha Franklin. But above all, many songs by his “favorite artist”Oren Lavie, Israeli singer-songwriter. And then a bizarre idea that is more “Bollanian” it is difficult to imagine: “I arranged a ballad version of Toxic by Britney Spears. All piano and voice ».
Frida Bollani Magoni is a happy girl. About herself she says only this: happy and smiling. Even if the pandemic and the lockdown have put it to the test, a little in crisis, cracking the light-heartedness it is now trying to recover. Not the first lockdown where “with the direct Instagram I did a kind of dress rehearsal of what awaits me now”. Plus the second, when “I suffered from being locked up without live music, without a stage, until television arrived and then …”.
She lives with her mother in the house where she was born, in the Pisan countryside, between Cascina and Navacchio. Attends the musical high school. “I live on music practically.” But «I don’t spend all day studying like crazy like the people of the Conservatory. Anyway, I either play or listen to music. It is lifeblood ». His other greatest passion is the English language. So much so that “if I don’t speak it a little every day, I’m not happy.” Its present is this, simple and linear. And the future is just right for now: «I want to be an artist, live between the recording studio and the stage. I have no particular dreams except to travel the world playing ». However, he has in mind “a list of artists with whom I would like to collaborate, the only certainty in terms of dreams because then, well, let’s see where life takes me, I don’t like to plan beforehand”. On this list are definitely Jacob Collier and of course Oren Lavie. «I don’t dream of myself, I dream of a musical ‘we’. As for me, I prefer to wait and see where life takes me “
June 8, 2021 | 10:20
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