All'una e trentacinque circa

Everything started in December 1989. Renzo Fantini was playing billiards, all by himself, in his Bologna office, listening to a tape that he was sent in the previous days. He loved the songs in it, composed and played by a young artist, that’s why he decided to produce them. Vinicio Capossela’s discographic adventure started this way, after two years of studies at Conservatory and a few, sporadic lessons with a jazz piano player. Capossela started writing songs in 1988; back then he played in small clubs, entertaining their clients, with a duo named Blue Valentine. In October 1990 he released his first album, All’una e trentacinque circa, which was successfully presented at Italian Premio Tenco; in fact, it won the Best Debut Album prize.

The references in sound go from Paolo Conte to Tom Waits, but actually Vinicio Capossela had been able to put into songs his stories and his world of metropolitan shipwreck, in an original, mature, ironical and melancholic way, all at the same time.

According to him, a song must be able to arise images through music, words and gesture. His music ranges from jazz and swing to blues and tango, with a hint of Italian traditional song – or, actually, the night rhythms of jazz, the yearning of Argentinian tango and the passionality of Neapolitan songs. Everything is connected to a world of imagination, or, as he says, a “world to live in”.

His concerts are intimate performances. When he puts his hands on the piano, it seems like a confession is beginning – an open-hearted, late-at-night confession; when he starts singing his songs, the atmosphere becomes smoky and wine tasting, like the stories Capossela tells – stories of melancholic and never ending nights, spent in the sleepy, foggy and desolate Italian province, looking for lost lovers “who turned into nostalgia”.