Exploring Musical Passions
Peter Cincotti, 24 years old, pianist, is trying to show me that, given his very varied musical passions, I have a musician in front of me that can’t be classified in a defined genre. Indeed, when his new album, East Of Angel Town, released on October 29th in Europe (in America it will be released on February 12th, 2008), is mentioned, journalists write that it is a mix of pop, rock, funk and jazz. And he, for his part, doesn’t help. If you ask him what album he has done, he answers: “I don’t know”. If you ask him to tell you what a song is about, he says: “It’s hard to explain”.
Getting Tired of Labels
The fact is, he confesses, he has gotten tired of the mania of journalists to stick a label to him at all costs. Like when they compare him to Michael Bublé. “Let’s get this straight: for me Michael has a beautiful voice, I like it. But the only thing we have in common is the fact that in 2003 we both reinterpreted classics: he swing (in the album Michael Bublé, ed.) and I jazz (in the album Peter Cincotti, ed.)”. There would also be the fact that both of you are handsome guys who have had success very young, that both of you have Italian origins, that both of you have acted in cinema and composed various soundtracks, that both of you have had the same producer, David Foster… “Look, I don’t know. We must listen carefully to our two last albums, the ones in which for the first time both of us have sung and written our songs: they are completely different”.
The Piano as Home
Do you feel more like a pianist than a singer? “Even though writing lyrics and interpreting them has made me feel finally satisfied, I must say yes, the piano is my true home. He’s been playing since he was three. “My parents gave me a toy piano then, which has been my true companion”. Any other passions? “The ones of any boy, who knows”. In his biographies he is described as a child prodigy. “Nonsense, I was just like everyone else. I have always attended public schools and I have always been average. My father and mother have transmitted to me the love for music but they have always repeated to me that the first thing was studying. They weren’t the type of parents that push the son to make it big at 5 years”. But at 13 he was already playing in New York clubs. “Very often they were restaurants and I did piano bar”. Was the public already asking him for jazz classics? “No. For the first ten years at the piano I played everything, my mother told my teacher: “Don’t make him do anything he doesn’t want, let him be free”. And so I did”.
