Tag: ludovico einaudi

7 in 7

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Big news from one of my favourites, my most-played on Spotify last year, and the world’s most-streamed classical artist, Ludovico Einaudi:

Pianist and composer Ludovico Einaudi has unveiled ambitious plans to release seven albums in seven consecutive months during 2019.

The project is the first of its kind for any classical artist – the most ambitious of Einaudi’s 30-year career.

The 63-year-old pianist was inspired to put together the project, called Seven Days Walking, after a winter’s walk in the Alps in 2018.

While walking the composer took a series of polaroids and it was these snowy images that sparked the idea of writing seven volumes of music – each portraying a different aspect of his journey.

This would explain the sudden rush of emails I’ve had from his publicity team. The first song is out (you can listen on Spotify here), the CDs – one to be released each month – are all available for pre-order, and you can even go all out on the 7 CD box set (safely, because let’s face it, you know what you’re going to get with Ludivico) for £50, ahead of its release in September.

Here’s the project website.

Me? I’m excited and looking forward to some new stuff over the next few months. It’s not often that you only have to wait a few weeks between releases from one of your favourite artists.

Not a great start

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It’s not been a great start to the day.

My phone’s software updated yesterday and reset the volume setting on the alarm clock. This was never going to be a good thing. Either it was going to be very, very quiet or IT WAS GOING TO WAKE UP EVERYONE IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD!

I almost soiled myself when it turned out to be the latter, but that blast of volume was actually the better option as I had had a particularly restless night. My uneasy slumbers had been punctuated by dreams of Godzilla hurling flaming cars from the M3 onto nearby sports fields. And that wasn’t even the worst bit: some of the drivers of those cars had agrostophobia, and those that survived the impact and the resulting blaze found themselves wholly triggered. It was awful.

You can see why I feel somewhat unrested.

And then, with assessments for both kids beginning today, the careful balancing act on the drive to school between recognising the importance of the tests and not scaring our little cherubs half to death. And it really doesn’t help when one is so laid back he’s practically horizontal and the other is concerned that she might get a sum wrong.
At some point.
During the rest of her life.

With them suitably advised (one newly terrified, one newly blasé) (well, done, Dad), I headed off to work. I could have taken the M3, and indeed it was probably the route of choice, but the chances of being attacked by a mutated dinosaur seemed so much higher along that route, so I took the low road instead.

Along with everyone else who was avoiding death by traumatic exposure to grass.

Desperate times called for entirely sensible measures, and thus I employed a mixture of soothing Ludovico Einaudi and Susanne Sundfør to calm me down as those around me (many of them in these categories) gave their best efforts at sabotaging any attempts at me getting to the lab in time to complete yesterday’s experiments.

Suffice to say, thanks to Ludo’s Petricor [sic] and Susanne’s The Golden Age, I remained calm, focussed and got to work in time to add the appropriate reagents at an appropriate time.

It’ll take more than dinosaurs, dodgy alarm clocks, the spectre of school examinations and all of the traffic in Cape Town to beat me.

Although I could do with a nap right now.

Petricor

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Right.
Before you dive down my throat, that’s the way it’s spelled in the title of this Ludovico Einaudi offering.

You and I would spell it Petrichor, wiv an aitch.

Petrichor is the earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil. The word is constructed from Greek petra, meaning “stone”, and ichor, the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology.

Yeah, like that.
But either way, you can hear the rain and smell that scent in this energetic yet beautifully relaxing song:

Petrichor happens (exists?) as the result of a two separate chemical processes triggered by the rain.

Firstly, oils – palmitic acid and stearic acid – secreted by during dry periods, and when it rains, these oils are released into the air. The second reaction that creates petrichor occurs when a chemical called geosmin (you may remember it from such post as Safe To Drink) produced by soil-dwelling bacteria called Actinomycetes is released. Geosmin and these plant oils combine to create the pleasant petrichor scent when rain hits the ground.

Actinos – great to look at under a microscope, absolute bastards to grow in the lab.

Add to those two the “pre-rain” ozone smell you get ahead of storms and you’ve got the most evocative odour outside of cut grass and freshly baked bread.

Gorgeous.

Logos

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Bit pressed for time, but need to write a blog post? Ludovico Einaudi has released a new video to promote his new Limited Edition Box Set.

It’s rather good (the video, but I’m sure the box set is worth a buy as well):

I love the clearly evident passion this guy has for his work, his music. I also like the fact that there’s a guy playing a violin like it’s a guitar just after 2 minutes in.
That’s actually the best way to play a violin – less invasive than with all that bowing.

Calm

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A moment of calm. A moment of thought.

Ludovico Einaudi is the man for the job.

This could be a video about man striving to find God. It might be a portrayal of one individual desperate to rise above the clamour and chaos. Perhaps it’s both.

For me today, it merely represents the opportunity to stop and be at peace for 3 minutes.

Thank you, Ludovico.