Cross Current Music presents one of the globe's most prodigious and prolific musicians - Ludovico Einaudi - on Tuesday, October 10 at 8pm at The Orpheum Theatre. As part of his 'Essential Einaudi' North American Tour, the Italian pianist and composer will be joined on stage by an ensemble of five fellow musicians for an exquisite evening of music drawn from Einaudi's body of work. The program highlights the artist's chart-topping, genre-defying compositions, hailed by critics and fans alike as evocative, seductive, and hauntingly beautiful - a thrilling blend of electronic, acoustic, alt-classical, ambient, and pop.
"The Guardian spoke true when they said if you haven't heard his music, 'it's probably because you don't know it's by Ludovico Einaudi,'" explained Cross Current Music's Patrick Darby, who presents the Vancouver engagement. "His creations are simply everywhere: Topping classical charts, underscoring TV and film, integrated into advertising, and remixed by commercial music's biggest stars. And while it can be difficult to accurately describe his combination of minimalist, contemporary, and classical music in words - you only need to hear a single phrase to recognize it as one of his entirely unique creations."
Ludovico Einaudi's latest album - 2015's Elements - topped classical charts in 42 countries across the globe. In the United Kingdom it soared into the nation's mainstream album chart at #12 - the first time in over a generation that a classical artist achieved such heights - surpassing releases by pop stars James Bay and
Taylor Swift. Breaking all records with Elements, Einaudi held all top 10 positions in the UK iTunes classical chart, while becoming the country's most streamed classical artist with more than 130 million streams, 500,000 followers, and two million monthly listeners on Spotify.
His compositions have formed the soundtrack of a multitude of film and TV productions, including This is England and The Intouchables, working with a diverse range of directors from acclaimed Canadian
Xavier Dolan to Oscar winner
Clint Eastwood. Brands such as NIKE and American Airlines have also seamlessly sync'd his works in their advertising campaigns. Einaudi's unique contemporary musical style, informed by minimalist, ambient, world and rock music, has defied categories to become part of the fabric of popular culture being heard in shows such as X-Factor, live performances by rapper/singer
Nicki Minaj, and remixes by post-rockers Mogwai. In his own concert appearances, Einaudi was the first classical act to play the iTunes Festival on a line-up that included pop diva
Lady Gaga and rapper Kendrick Lamar.
In keeping with his belief in music as a source of spiritual elevation in a troubled world, Einaudi is also a passionate advocate for environmental causes, including the preservation of the shrinking Arctic. In June 2016, he took an expedition on the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise, which carried messages from eight million people around the globe calling for governments to save the Arctic from threats such as oil drilling and destructive fishing. Upon the ship's arrival in an Arctic bay, Einaudi debuted Elegy for the Arctic, written for the occasion, alone with a Steinway on a pontoon raft while massive glaciers calved in the background. The video for Elegy for the Arctic is available
here, and the newly released behind the scenes footage can be found
here.
Einaudi was born in Turin, Italy in 1955. His grandfather Luigi was the first post-war President of a newly democratic country, and his father Giulio founded what is still one of the most prominent publishing houses in Italy. Ludovico was introduced to the piano at the age of six by his mother, a pianist and music lover, and his older sister introduced him to Hendrix, Dylan and the Stones. As Einaudi puts it: "Music was where we went to be free of my father's overpowering world." At 16 he was studying classical composition, and by the late 1970s he was studying under and then assisting avant-garde composer Luciano Berio whom he met at a concert in Paris. The 2015 album Elements was originally conceived as an homage to Einaudi's influential mentor.
Einadui's Vancouver performance will be the first Canadian stop on his 'Essential Einaudi' North American Tour, which commences Oct. 7, 2017 in Seattle.
More information at
ludovicoeinaudi.com
About Cross Current Music
Cross Current Music (CCM), a Montreal based enterprise, promotes high quality artists in the performing arts disciplines, with a particular emphasis on music of all world cultures, the jazz/improvised music as well as circus arts. CCM is an artist management, representation and touring organization.
Photo credit: Ray Tarantino
