Hands

Hands is the tenth unreleased work by Tony Carnevale, created with Stefania Graziani, with Tony Carnevale as the artistic director of the project.

It is the result of a long-standing human relationship that also developed through mentorship, within which Stefania Graziani followed a formative path under the guidance of Tony Carnevale and the ANORA method he developed. It represents the first artistic output of the new Artists for Artists – ANORA Project ( https://www.anora.it/anora-project/ ), conceived and artistically directed by Tony Carnevale, based primarily on artistic collaboration as an exchange of experiences, stimuli, creativity, and humanity.

The new disc consists of eleven instrumental tracks for piano and other instruments; it is music of free artistic expression, free from the conditioning of the market, but at the same time absolutely usable and communicative, especially from an emotional point of view. It is also difficult to ascribe it to a precise genre, but if one really had to define it, one could place it between contemporary classical music and modern symphonism, certainly also close to the sphere of soundtracks.

Concept:

The key idea of this work centers on the word “collaboration,” which is not merely a form of “working together” in artistic and practical terms (composition and performance), but also a collaboration grounded in a shared vision, in an ideal: a shared way of living and understanding music and artistic expression. The contents of these ideals are further articulated in the eight books written by Tony Carnevale and are supported by the ANORA Association. The ninth book, Beyond Notes – Unlocking the Creative and Emotional Power through Music, written in English, is currently in the process of acquisition by the Library of Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Stefania Graziani’s previous album, La Musica Cambia, had already been created and developed under the artistic direction and with the creative involvement of Tony Carnevale, within the formative context of the ANORA Laboratories (ANORA Labs), conceived and directed by him, and grounded in a distinctive vision of music and artistic training shaped over many years devoted to research and the education of other artists.

Hands also tells of the compositional collaboration and artistic relationship between a man and a woman, which led to the creation of a work in which both, united and distinct, recognise themselves.

To signify that it is possible to overcome the many sad stories of women whose creativity was dulled or crushed by negative relationships with the men who were close to them.

The title of the album “Hands”, finally, brings with it many readings: hands, as the hands we use to ‘make’, hands that follow the movement of thought to ‘concretely realise artistic forms’, hands that therefore express a fusion between mind and body, rejecting an abstract making or entrusted to artificial intelligence. But hands, a fundamental tool for the human being, can also do so much more. Hands reaffirms the need to valorise, perhaps even defend, an ‘artistic making’ that must necessarily pass through a musical craftsmanship, the knowing how to make things, not only to think them, but to know how to realise them in concrete, with one’s own hands, precisely. Hands that ‘know’, because developed on experience, on doing in order to learn how to do, in a world in which ‘saying’ seems to prevail more and more dangerously, in order to pretend to know how to ‘do’. Hands that have also ‘sweated’: both authors come from classical studies, having attended the Conservatory. Perhaps this too may have contributed to developing a certain type of musical thinking, certainly built on a passion for expression through sound, but also forged in the need to organise a method of study and work to achieve the desired results.

As for the production aspect, after an initial shared creative phase, the work passed into the hands of Tony Carnevale for an artistic evolution of the composition and for the entire technical realization, from the optimization of virtual instruments to mixing and mastering. From a performance standpoint, the work was created by playing the sampled instruments one by one. This reflects a poetic approach that Carnevale had already fully realized—and not only—in his first album. Risonanze and in the recentTu che mi puoi capire, he has already expressed in detail in Oltre le note – un approccio non razionale alla musica, defining it as an Integral Composition: it is therefore a compositional process that begins with the idea-image and ends with the final Master (moreover, Electronic Composition teaches) also part of the process creative. Conceptually, it could be defined as. Virtual poly-instrumentalism,(or Electronic), with reference to acoustic poly-instrumentalism (e.g. the Mike Oldfield of the well-known Tubular Bells). Artistically speaking, in a more general sense, it is the proposal of a process of composition similar to that of modeling moldable materials (clay etc.), in which the form is defined progressively and simultaneously with the composition (in this sense close to improvisation destined for later elaboration), arriving at the production of an accomplished immaterial work.

The tracks that make up the album are:

1. Nelle Tue Mani: Centered on a piano thematic cell around which the orchestra moves with a tight rhythmic drive while at the same time unfolding broad, interacting themes. As the opening track of the CD, its title also declares the meaning of the collaborative relationship: placing oneself in the hands of the other, trusting and entrusting, the sense of a relationship that does not risk disappointment.

Link YouTube Nelle Tue Mani (Official Audio): https://youtu.be/I5hGCiUZf8Q?si=ecanzYO0SixuYphV

2. Uniti E Distinti: The piano supports a dialogue between two violins, while a human voice in the background evokes distant memories. Here too, the title is closely connected to the meaning of the concept: Uniti e Distinti (“United and Distinct”), as the two authors are—each distinct from the other in musical style and personal identity, yet united by the same way of living music and artistic expression, without which a project of this kind would not have been possible.

Link YouTube Uniti E Distinti (Official Audio): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOAmL7nb2Ao&list=PLPuPie73mNJW0zmshHLtJpI1x5_GgJHOE&index=3

3. Mare Calmo Sotto A Un Temporale: A thunderclap breaks the silence, and beneath a persistent rain the piano moves with dark, shadowy tones, underscored by a timpani and the rhythmic phrases of a flute and a cello. Gradually, the atmosphere opens into a dynamic crescendo as other instruments join in, almost as if to express a return to calm. “Calm sea” is an inner image, always exposed to the “storms” of human relationships.

4. Lo Scorrere Dell’Acqua: A repeated sound, like a drop falling with the same force and at the same tempo, while human voices create an almost dreamlike atmosphere. The piano once again serves as the root from which an interweaving of thematic phrases unfolds—violin, cello, oboe, flute, and duduk—engaged in continuous dialogue with one another.

5. Incontri Possibili: A disruptive piece at the midpoint of the album: the sound of the harpsichord surprises the listener and carries them back in time. Incontri Possibili is a “tribute” to the style of Johann Sebastian Bach and to the myth of Ian Anderson. The piece also carries another possible interpretation: the intention to move beyond musical genres and to free music from rigid definitions and compartments. Artistic expression is—and must remain—free from every form of rigid thinking, so that certain encounters, indeed, can become possible.

Link YouTube Incontri Possibili (Official Audio): https://youtu.be/fFt-iY4BkJg

6. Il Tempo Del Cuore: The heartbeat marks the tempo of this piece, whose intimate and calm atmosphere is entrusted to the sound of a harp. The piano appears in the background and then comes to the foreground in the central section of the piece, where it completely envelops the sound of the harp. The time of the heart, the capacity to love—this alone is what matters and gives meaning to life.

7. Nelle Tue Mani (Sequel): This piece is a reprise of the opening track: the same piano thematic cell here evolves, modulates, and intensifies rhythmically in a crescendo in which violin, cello, and winds bring forth, almost singing, a new theme. The piece serves as a connecting bridge to the second part of the album.

8. Il Vento Sognato:
An empty, silent concert hall. Through a half-open window, a gentle wind enters and, as it blows, begins to animate the wind instruments: a shy flute starts to move, pursued by its own fear, then gathers courage—but just as it declares itself, a “ramshackle” orchestra springs into motion, giving life to an awkward symphony. This almost drunken movement, which a snare drum attempts to straighten out, culminates in an intense crescendo and an accelerando that gradually unravels until it collapses. The wind, after orchestrating a magical and imperfect music, leaves. And the dream goes with it.

9. Nel Castello Di Carta: The sound of a celesta evokes dreamlike atmospheres; the sound of the wind, carried over from the previous piece, leads into another landscape—a paper castle that comes alive at night with love stories among figures of dreamlike imagination. At a certain point, the piano breaks the spell, racing ever more insistently upward until it reaches the top of the keyboard, then cascading down toward the deepest register. Calm returns, and the sound of the celesta comes back, carried away by the voice of the wind, fading into silence.

10. Viaggio Senza Dove: The sound of the piano creates a break from the almost playful atmosphere that precedes it: the landscape is intimate and calm, and over the piano’s voice a cello enters, responding and phrasing until a pause. The second part of the piece begins immediately with intensity—piano and cello tighten their motion, while ethnic percussion increases the tension. In the final section, unexpectedly and in a powerful emotional crescendo, a choir enters.

Link YouTube Viaggio Senza Dove (Official Audio): https://youtu.be/4y4IAMFHQMU?si=psC4Wlz11-MsqFDY

11. Passo A Due:
It is a tribute by Tony Carnevale to Stefania Graziani, a piece for two pianos that seeks to tell the particular story linking the two composers: a first phase in which he stimulates her creative process, followed by a second phase in which she takes the initiative and he follows, supporting her. This leads to a moment of “working together,” where the two piano parts intertwine and there are no longer distinct “roles”—a necessary relationship that eventually allows for separation, the moment when she can continue her artistic path on her own.

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