Niccolò Fabi, the effort of writing: "This album is the freest of all"

Chalet songs. "I recorded it in a mountain cabin because, when I thought it would be important to give a strong setting to songs that didn't live only from their writing, but also from the energy absorbed by a stimulating and evocative place, I remembered Lago dei Caprioli , in Trentino, where I had been on holiday" says Niccolò Fabi about the new album " Libertà negli occhi " in front of the cameras of "Soundcheck", the musical format also available on social media and on our newspaper's website. "So we moved there for ten days in front of the frozen surface of that body of water immersed in silence".

The writer Paolo Cognetti says that in the mountains everyone can find a landscape that resembles them and that makes them feel good. What is yours? "The mountain resizes your being, making you feel minimal, a bit like the sea does. Even if in front of the immensity of the sea, having as a limit only the thread of the horizon, you can lose your way a bit, while the snow-capped peaks comfort you, protect you, offering you a sensation that I feel very close to my character".

In the opening track “Alba” she admits to feeling herself in the pause between understanding and changing. Why? “Perhaps because of the hermeticism of that repeated phrase, ‘Alba’ is my favorite song on the album. A song with few words and great intensity, thanks to the presence of so much instrumental music that allows me to fly far away with my imagination in a vivid, fertile way. Time makes you aware of things, but, even if you understand them, you don’t always have the ability to produce a change. In fact, I think there is a contrast between nature and culture, if by nature we mean what you are from birth and by culture what you learn through experience”.

The album comes out tomorrow, the day of his fifty-seventh birthday. In the booklet he says that at this age writing songs is like trying to fit the sea into a glass. "I have the clear feeling that even the song has a biological age and that the authors give their best in the initial phase of the journey. Going forward you see things in a different way, more aware and, perhaps more fun, but the creative fury decreases. It's true that the more you live the more things you have to say, but I think that the song is the perfect form of communication to tell the discovery of the first anger, of the first love, of the first great emotions. Less to dwell on the nuances of adulthood".

In the notes he also says that since 2010 he has begun to lighten his expectations. "It's always life that rules. And I'm not talking about artistic, professional life, but about important events that direct you toward the direction that is perhaps the best for you. In conjunction with a very painful event in my life (the sudden death of his daughter Olivia - ed.) I felt that my music making took on a whole new importance. And that some of my potential, illusory targets to hit I had to put aside to experience songwriting as a form of therapy, healing, freedom and, in some way, necessary joy. And I consider this album, perhaps because it is the latest in chronological order, the freest of all. Whether it is more or less beautiful than its predecessors is of little importance".

Six years have passed between “Libertà negli occhi” and its predecessor “Tradizione e tradimento”. A lot. "It's a bit like the consequence of the sea in the glass mentioned above. I've been making records for thirty years and writing songs for more than forty, so I think I've said practically everything that my sensitivity suggests to me; a feeling that makes it difficult to identify something to publish, to find even just a nuance that hasn't been addressed yet. Also because for me, recording records, putting ideas and suggestions into circulation that are designed to stimulate people's souls a little, still represents a responsibility".

Next Monday (at 6:30 p.m.) she presents “Libertà negli occhi” at the Base in Milan while waiting for the theater tour to start in the fall, with stops at the Arcimboldi on October 11 and 12. In the meantime, however, on June 14 she will be in concert in Val di Sole, in Vermiglio, Trento, about ten kilometers from where she recorded these new songs. "Yes, that Vermiglio on everyone's lips thanks to Maura Delpero's film. I'm happy that it has received so many awards, because it is beautiful. It seemed right to me that these songs should resonate for the first time on a meadow in those areas, without a stage, with people sitting, or lying on blankets, looking into each other's eyes and letting the emotions circulate more powerfully than in other contexts".