Fabrizio Selli
Born in Milan (IT), where he studied piano and composition, he began composing when he was a child. Having fallen in love for classical and jazz music, as well as pop, he worked as a piano and keyboards player, musician and arranger in many different music environments, recording jingles, soundtracks, dance and electronic records (with Sony Music and Emi) in both Italy and other parts of Europe.
In addition to ‘popular’ sounds, he enjoys composing in his own style, which is a mix between new age, classical, and pop. He defines this mix as "soundtracks without movies"—a handiwork of piano composition and the wise use of various technologies.
“The Magic Room” is his first solo album. Recorded in his own studio, it contains 16 tracks. Piano is the main hero, backed by both other keyboards and cello. Ryuichi Sakamoto, Michael Nyman and Lyle Mays are three major inspirational artists for his compositions, as well as Ludovico Einaudi, Ennio Morricone’s soundtracks, Burt Bacharach’s songs, , Strawinsky, Boards Of Canada, Björk.
Erik Satie/Fabrizio Selli: Gymnopédie No.1 (The Magic Room Version)
The Gymnopédies are three "morceaux" for solo piano composed by Erik Satie in 1888, the first of which is here revisited by Fabrizio Selli in the same vein as his recent album The Magic Room. In this new offering, Selli has increased his use of electronics, though without sacrificing the refinement and subtlety characteristic of his preceeding work; technological wizardry is applied with taste and restraint to enhance the actual sound of the acoustic piano and to enrich its sonic ambience. Satie’s piece, dreamy and romantic yet daringly modern for its time, provides the ideal vehicle for Fabrizio Selli to expand the approach introduced to his listeners with The Magic Room, in which a delicate, ethereal atmosphere is magically sustained throughout the work’s unconventional harmonic structures. Unconventional as was Satie himself, a true original – considered, not without reason, a pioneering genius by his wide circle of students and supporters – who expressed his very personal artistic convictions through seemingly whimsical titles and innovative musical forms.
He introduced a novel musical language – defining his work “furniture music” and even “wallpaper music” – and today’s Ambient Music, a term coined in the late seventies by Brian Eno, would be unthinkable without Satie’s contribution; indeed, Eno has always cited the French master as his major source of inspiration. In this new arrangement of the first Gymnopédie by Fabrizio Selli, the “classical” character of the original score is infused with electronic stylings dear to the Brian Eno “school”, while, at the same time, the listener may detect the influence on the Milanese musician of other contemporary artists such as Björk and the Boards Of Canada in the choice of precious, peculiar sonorities and the addition of elastic, rarified rhythm sequences here and there.