I accidentally recorded a piano solo album

entitled “Piano Meditations Volume. 1” out on Domanda Music July 17 2026

I DID NOT SEE THIS COMING!

This piece of work came to me as a surprise. A year ago I was contacted by a label who specializes in music for calming and regulating the mind, helping people sleep and facilitating meditation. They got in touch because they were looking to expand their catalogue towards a jazz direction and stumbled upon the Collettivo Immaginario album “Oltreoceano”, which has been gaining a lot of traction since its release in May 2025. I was flattered by their interest but told them I was far from being ready to produce another Collettivo album anytime soon.

During one of our meetings I had mentioned that my first instrument was the piano, but that I never went too deep into studying it and instead developed a closer relationship with the drums. While trying to figure things out and find them a suitable jazz project, they asked if I would want to release a meditation piano album. When I heard that request I felt I wouldn’t be able to live up to my own expectations, but after pondering for a while I told myself: “why not?”. I wasn’t expected to play standards or to improvise in a jazz fashion, so I felt comfortable putting myself out there and sharing whatever abilities I have in expressing my musicality on an instrument I hold in such respect and admiration.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT, REALLY?

I then arranged an afternoon at my friend’s house, who owns a really nice baby grand, and managed to get a decent, close sound with a couple of condenser microphones. Over the following three hours I was able to channel some spontaneous melodies and harmonies, keeping in mind the purpose of this music. It was not only personal expression or a showcase of my artistry and vision - it was mainly functional. You could almost call it “service music”. When I think deeply about my output, for as extravagant and not necessarily easy-listening as it is, I do recognize that intentional approach: service.

This particular recording was conceived as a demo for the above-mentioned label, to get feedback on whether I was moving in the right direction. I eventually never heard back from them regarding this project, and when trying to negotiate a possible deal for one of my other albums we never reached an agreement, and things fell through completely.

The disappointment made me forget about this body of work entirely, and I moved on with other projects and activities. A few weeks later I found myself having a lot of trouble sleeping and felt the need to listen to some calming sounds. These improvisations came to mind and I decided to test their efficacy. They worked! Ever since - and it has happened a lot lately - I’ve used this music to wind down and relax. I then started playing it to friends and, after receiving a lot of encouragement and approval, decided to release it.

THERE’S NO VISION, ACTUALLY

I’ve been thinking a lot about vulnerability in the past few years since I moved to LA in 2021, and this represents the biggest risk I’ve taken in my musical journey, which began around 1996 when I moved to New York, jumped into the professional realm and started getting my education together.

Because of the functional nature of this music, I felt that the titles should not suggest any particular imagery, so I borrowed classical music terminology to describe the tempo of each improvisation, assigning a neutral description to each one. Harmonically, every piece stays exclusively in one key, so that the mind does not have to work too hard when taking in these sounds.

ARTWORK, HARD WORK, HEART WORK

Since starting Domanda Music in 2021, the cover artwork for my releases has drawn inspiration from the vision of a specific group of artists from my hometown of Padova. They were called Gruppo Enne - founded in the late 1950s - and what I find so fascinating about them is that they were building an entire ideological framework from scratch, charting a new visual path at a moment when everything felt possible. They went on to become enormously influential, with works exhibited at MoMA in New York and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. One of the group’s main founders, Alberto Biasi, is still very much alive and active.

After immersing myself in his incredible and vast body of work, I became determined to find a way to meet him in person. I wanted to tell him directly how deeply his work spoke to me — not just as a visual experience, but from the perspective of a musician.

It took about four years to make that happen. In the summer of 2025 I finally visited his atelier and spent a few hours in his company, just the two of us. The irony is that his studio is only a ten-minute walk from my family’s apartment in Padova. It was an unforgettable afternoon - full of stories and questions - and I found him to be an enormously charming and warm person, sharp and genuinely curious about my own story too. At the end of that encounter, the Maestro very generously gifted me a triptych digital artwork to use across a few releases: an illustration made of dots whose shadows shift in different directions, creating a subtle illusion of light arriving from multiple sides at once.

At the time of the gift I hadn’t yet conceived this body of work, and for a while I found myself wondering what music would eventually live beneath that image. In my mind it had to be a series of some kind, because the triptych depicts the same image three times in different colours - which naturally led me to the title Piano Meditations Vol. 1, and to the intention of continuing. Because, again: why not?

I am deeply honoured that Alberto Biasi has so generously made his artistry available for my music. It is something I don’t take lightly, and I can only hope that the music proves worthy of the company it keeps.