I have the chance to play in different settings with some great,great,great,great and lovely people like John Taylor, Ralph Towner, Rita Marcotulli, Paolo Fresu, Patrice Heral, Enzo Pietropaoli,Danilo Rea, David Linx and Diederik Wiessels, and so many others that I couldn't list here....
they are wonderful.
some details onwho's playing the tunes you're listening here:
AMELIA : Danilo Rea,(p) Enzo Pietropaoli(b)
UP FROM THE SKIES : Claudio Filippini(p)Luca Bulgarelli(b)Walter Paoli (d)
AND THE KITCHEN SINK : Huw Warren (p)
VOCCUCCIA DE NO PIERZECO : Rita Marcotulli (p)
FORSE NO : MPDV (v, live electronics)Ernst Reijseger (cello)Paul Urbanek(p) Patrice Heral (drums)
ANCOR CHE COL PARTIRE :John Taylor (p)
Singer, composer, arranger, she studies opera and contemporary singing and begins her on-stage activity in 1976 as a singer and player (plectra, percussions, piano) in research groups committed to ethnic music as well as ethnic and non-ethnic polyphony, mostly related to the Mediterranean, Balkan and south-American areas.
Since the '80s she is active in the jazz sphere, steadily collaborating with musicians like John Taylor, Ralph Towner, Rita Marcotulli, Ernst Rejiseger, Paolo Fresu, Norma Winstone, Steve Swallow, Gianluigi Trovesi, David Linx, Diederik Wissels and gigging with prominent musicians such as Joe Zawinul, Michael Brecker, Peter Erskine, Miroslav Vitous, Uri Caine, Dave Liebman, Billy Hart, Eliot Ziegmund, Cameron Brown, Steve Turre, Maria Joao, Ramamani Ramanujan, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Nguyen-le and many others, participating in the most important international festivals, and running European and overseas tours.
After 15 years of jazz practice, a long work on the great American songbook, on scat and be-bop, the first trespassings into free and the meetings with European jazz, since ‘94 she begins a new phase of her work with the project Nauplia, conceived and directed together with Rita Marcotulli. The recovery of vocalness from the deep matrixes of the sound, which will see the encounter between the hybrid of jazz and the multi-shaped peculiarities of Neapolitan singing ("Nauplia", "Fore Paese", "Triboh").
The work about improvisative possibilities of the voice in contact with several cultural contexts becomes the matrix of her "new course", whose first step is "Phonè", a work about the voice preceding the language, about the rhythm and the dance in their different cultural inflexion; it's a project which marks the beginning of the collaboration with John Taylor.
1997 signs the birth of the trio with John Taylor and Ralph Towner, with which she records the CD "Verso", accomplishes several tours in Italy and a long European tour during 2001. In that year the name of Maria Pia has been inserted, by the most celebrated signatures of American jazz press, in the category "BEYOND ARTIST" of the 49th DOWN BEAT CRITICS POLL; in this list, her name appears near the ones of outstanding artists such as Caetano Veloso, Joni Mitchell, Cesaria Evora, Olu Dara, Carlos Santana, Uri Caine and Marisa Monte. This very important acknowledgement has definitively imposed her on an international level.
It's dated 2002 the CD "Nel Respiro", once again together with John Taylor and Ralph Towner, with the participation of Steve Swallow and Patrice Heral, with whom she begins a profitable artistic collaboration. 2003 is the year for the project and the CD "Tumulti", which represents his most experimental work, oriented to interaction between voice, improvisation and electronics, by the side of Patrice Heral, co-leader of the project, and with the collaboration of the brilliant cello player Ernst Reijseger and the Austrian pianist Paul Urbanek, multi-awarded in his country for his "reverse composing" works. "Tumulti" is received with enormous approval by the critics, and is done live at jazz festivals in Italy and abroad.
In "So Right" (2005), together with the co-leaders Danilo Rea and Enzo Pietropaoli and the contribute of the drummer Aldo Romano, she faces a reflection about the song form, through the composition of originals and the reinterpretation of songs by Joni Mitchell, great innovator of the North American songbook. _Her interest for songwriting and song form continues with the group Songs from the Underground, with which she records a live concert at the Casa del Jazz in Rome, released in the series “Jazz Italiano live 2007” with the Magazine L’espresso. That same year the “Casa del Jazz “ gives her a “Carte Blanche” to celebrate her 30th year of live activity.
In 2006 she records the Cd “One Heart, three voices“ with David Linx and Diederik Wiessels, featuring her and Fay Claassen. The Cd receives great acclaim in France, the Prix of the Academie Charles-Croz, and has toured extensively in Europe.
In 2007 she meets the great Welsh piano player and composer Huw Warren, and they start an intense activity as a duo. They record for the Label “Parco della Musica” the CD “Dialektos”, featuring Gabriele Mirabassi. The cd has been presented in Rome, Paris and London.
2008 has been a year of strong creative activity, in which she starts 2 new important projects:
“Body at work”, with Michele Rabbia, Maurizio Giri and Vincent Courtois, a reflection about the body through music, literature, electronics.
“Roden Crater suite”, commisioned by IUAV (University of Venezia, faculty of Architecture), for the exhibition Geometries of light, dedicated to the Roden Crater project, by the great artist James Turrell. The Suite, in 12 movements, is performed together with a video created by the Imago Rerum Team, illustrating the accomplished-to-be roden project complex. It was performed live in 2009, in the presence of James Turrell himself, at the Bergamo Scienze Festival and at the Bienal de arquitectura y paysage in Tenerife. The project will soon become a cd.
She is the winner of the 2008 Top Jazz referendum, held by the magazine Musica Jazz, in the category Singer.
Another favorite field or research, reinterpreted from an improvisative perspective, is baroque music. She avails in this sense of the collaboration of the harpsichord player, organist and orchestra director Claudio Astronio, very well-known name in the scene of the international baroque music. The meeting between improvisation and baroque vocals – already included in the experience of De Vito – are the fulcrum of their shared projects: "Chaconne" - (baroque voice - modern voice - live electronics – harpsichord – theorbo –cello – double harp), "Coplas a lo divino" (sacred music, antique and contemporary, for pipe organ, voice and electronics) which became a cd, that will be released in fall 2008 by the label Stradivarius, featuring Michel Godard (serpent) and Paolo Fresu (trumpet-flugelhorn-electronics) and the duo "La danza della voce" (harpsichord, voice and electronics).
She also features in last Michel Godard’s recording: Archangelica, with the Atelier des Musiciens du Louvre, another work exploring improvisation, baroque music and electronics.
Parallel to her leader activity is an infinite series of collaborations and of great success participations.
Since 1996 she collaborates with the British composer Colin Towns; with his Big Band, the "Mask Orchestra", she played live at the major festivals in England and Germany including the remarkable exhibition at the Queen Elizabeth Hall of London with the "Mask Symphonic" (70 musicians) and the participation of Norma Winstone.
The maestro Roberto De Simone appreciates her and composes for her a rewriting of the “Fantasia Cromatica” by J.S.Bach, recorded in the cd “Specula e Gemini”.
She also dedicated to a video musical work side by side with the sculptress and video-maker Marisa Albanese. Together they gave life to three videos, “Strappi d’acqua”, “Color Pelle” and “Festia Lente”, projected in occasion of a wide variety of events: Italian Institute of philosophic studies, Napoli Bologna, ’94; International contemporary art festival, Ripa-arte Rome; Sorrento Cinema International meetings, Video section, ‘94; Original Video International Festival, Corto Circuito, Napoli, ’97; Anversa Festival.
For an art book by Albanese (Orphani, edited by Cronopio) she created a suite thought for voice and loop machine, “A nulla”, presented in the Contemporary Art Gallery of Rome, in the context of the exhibition “Art Tribes”, produced by Achille Bonito Oliva.
Some other various collaborations: “Tribute to Ella Fitzgerald” and “The ugly duckling” with the Sardinia Orchestra on music by Gaslini; “Jazz te deum” on music by Bruno Tommaso, Gaslini, Verdinelli; “OJS plays Colin Towns”; “Gesualdo” by Tino Tracanna and Corrado Guarino; “Oltre Napoli, La Notte e Lettere da Orsara” by Bruno Tommaso, “Il Celeste specchio” by the contemporary composer Carlo Boccadoro; “Specula e gemini” by Bruno Tommaso and Roberto De Simone with the Naples J.A.M. Orchestra.
Bravo Maria Pia and thank you again for your concert last night in Montpellier. You are a wonderfull musician. Hope to see you again with david Linx, maybe in Grignan next month.
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