A Sit Down With Italian Composer Louis Sicliano

ANCIENT COSMIC TRUTH, your new album is a musical journey that blends different musical styles from all over the world: Indian, Persian, Chinese, African and Mediterranean music. How did this union?

Just as cooking is a gustatory experience: you put raw materials together, use spices, cooking time and mix flavors and smells, music is instead an auditory experience. Sounds, melodies and rhythms are combined to create joy for body and mind. Not only that, when Music becomes Alchemy then it communicates directly with the Soul. My personal way of putting together the great musical traditions of the world, with Jazz and Cosmic Music made with my synthesizers is a way to travel the paths of the Unconscious that lead directly to the center of our solar plexus. It is there that the Soul dances and the vital principle that permeates everything radiates. Music for me is the highest form of Spirituality that the Human Being has and this album is a testimony of my life spent for music and in music.

How would you classify your music?

Some music critics have called it Cosmic Progressive Jazz, others Quantum Music. For me it is my Music. A music where my whole life is inside. A life of enormous sacrifices, of so much pain and suffering that musical practice has commuted everything into profound Joy. Surely Jazz, World Music, Contemporary Classical Music and Indian Classical Music are very present in my music. Then there is my love for Africa and for the animistic traditions that I am deepening with Giovanni Imparato a great percussionist with whom I often play together and who is also a babalawo of the Yoruba religion.

Synthesizers are the center of your Sound. Can you explain us your approach to performance with Synths?

At 16 I made my debut as conductor. The newspapers of the time titled “the Baby conductor of Italy”. I conducted orchestras, choirs, I studied organ. I have always had a certain familiarity with the sound timbres and colors of musical instruments. I am of the zodiac sign of pisces. This duality has always led me to combine traditions and technologies, ancient and modern, sunshine and lunarity, the microcosm and the macrocosm, intimism and extroversion. The chiaroscuro, the strong contrasts have always fascinated me. The synthesizer is all of that. It is a tool with which you can build your own music starting from sound atoms. Playing the synthesizer for me is like conducting a cybernetic orchestra. My music could not express itself without this instrument. It is essential! An important thing: My MOOG ONE, the PROPHET10 and the SUPER 6 are placed under the OLISTICA MDT Pyramid which creates an indescribable energy field. This is also a quantum technology known from very ancient civilizations such as the Egyptians and the Mayans. My Synths in this energy range become even more powerful and so so expressive.

How did your passion for synthesizers start?

For years I have been interested in Artificial Intelligence applied to musical metastructures, thanks to my mentor Antonio De Santis, one of the founders of IRCAM and a world pioneer of Electronic Music. I owe everything I know to him. And thanks to this brilliant Composer who built his own synthesizers that I was able to develop my relationship with the magical world of synths. I was 15. However, I remember that already at the age of 10/11 I had a 1/4 inch reel to reel recorder with which I did my experiments: reverse, cuts, fades. I later learned that that was MUSIQUE CONCRETE. I have always been attracted to music technologies, in fact I attended the Masters in Music Technology at NYU with Robert Rowe.

MUSIC MULTIVERSE EXPLORATION: A NEW COSMOLOGY OF THE SOUND is considered one of the most innovative composition books of recent years. How do you use these techniques?

I’ve always thought to myself: to digest all the concepts expressed in MUMEx my metalanguage book and make them fluid it takes 2 lives and maybe I wouldn’t make it. Certainly the MUMEx approach is fundamental in my way of making music. I briefly explain to our fellow readers: In summary, MUMEx is a composer’s tool that investigates the root of processes. I am not interested in mapping events to score or graph paper or recording these sounds. This has been done ordinarily for centuries. I am interested in understanding the dynamics and laws that underlie a process. Each time the sound events will change because a process can have infinite ways of unfolding. MUMEx opens to the awareness that Music is a Quantum Art where the observer influences the observed and vice versa.

How have you evolved as an artist over the last year?

This last year has been very important for my artistic evolution. Thanks to Dr. Renzo Cresti world famous musicologist and artistic director of MUSICA PRESENTE RECORDS who strongly supported me with his label, I met last year Renato Marengo who later became the Executive Producer and Supervisor of ANCIENT COSMIC TRUTH. Renato is an 80-year-old young man and he is the founder of NAPULE’S POWER, a very important musical movement born in the seventies in Naples – Italy, my hometown. Like the Brazilian Tropicalists (Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque, Gal Costa etc.) the NAPULE’S POWER artists have also had a strong impact on the international music scene. And today I have the honor of carrying on the Sound of NAPULE’S POWER around the world.

Who are the other musicians of the band in your new recording adventure?

Alex Acuña, a living legend, on percussion. Randy Brecker, the greatest jazz trumpeter of our time. Claudio Romano on drums who has played with many important American Jazz artists and Umberto Muselli on tenor sax who has been defined as the heir of Michael Brecker. The Mix on the NEVE analogue console was made by Andrea Secchi. And the mastering is by Carmine Simeoni. All super analog! I would like to thank my best friend, the composer Vittorio Giampietro who gave me a great help for editing and made me discover the wonderful world of Reaper, a super powerful DAW.

The meeting with Wayne Shorter was very important in your career. Can you tell us about it?

Wayne Shorter is the greatest living composer as far as I’m concerned. His genius is something overwhelming. His music comes directly from the future. Thanks to Wayne I understood that I had to focus on my music without hesitation. I have the privilege and honor of being a close friend of the Shorter family and this is another wonderful gift that life has given me.

How does this new album fit into your musical career?

I have waited 25 years to record this Suite in 4 movements. It cost me 4 years of hard work. It’s definitely the most important album I’ve made to date. It ushers in a new era in my life.

What’s next for you?

We will tour and take this music all over the world. I am very happy because the music is expressed in the live performance. The exchange of energy with the audience is the essence of everything. I have always thought of Music as the best of therapies and as the most beautiful path to Spirituality, a Spirituality that is based on Peace, Respect, Listening, Empathy and the ANCIENT COSMIC TRUTH: Love. All things the world needs. We look forward to seeing you at our concerts. See you!

URL: https://louissiciliano.com/

End of Interview