Shuffling the deck
Some summers seem built for pausing a moment and taking everything in at once.
The one I'm living through is one of them.
Not because there's less to do — quite the opposite — but because, for the first time in a while, I've found the space to stop and notice how many fronts are open at the same time. Artistic. Managerial. Personal. All together, all active, each urgent in its own way.
Yes, it's a particular moment in time. I don't say that with press-release emphasis — I say it because it's simply true, and it's rare for so many things to come to maturity together.
On the artistic front, I'm currently involved in two projects that are giving me plenty to think about, in the best sense.
The first is "La Porta Nuova" by William Jones (Summerhouse records): come autumn, we'll be back in the studio to record the new single, and I can't wait to find that particular energy again — the kind that only comes when you already know who you're working with.
The second project, for now, remains largely under wraps — I can only say it will take me to the theatre, for a show conceived in honour of a great Italian performer… I'll say more when the time comes.
On the managerial front, though, the story is different.
The projects I've built over the last ten years have reached a maturity that is, on one hand, a real satisfaction — and on the other, pushes me, as always in my way of doing things, to shuffle the deck a little.
Because maturity, if you don't shake it up now and then, turns into habit. And habit is the thing I fear most.
PERFORM School of music® keeps evolving, driven by important developments in international certifications that are finally taking hold in Italy too — certifications we specialised in many years ago, when few really believed in them. Seeing them become a widespread point of reference today is a quiet but real satisfaction.
BLOM Community, the editorial project I chose to call Blog of music, has recently passed its first five years. And right now it's finding new energy, with projects tied to the institute's new range of courses that will involve the students of our regular programmes too — not just those who write, but those who are still learning how.
Blast Off Records, meanwhile, has just completed its first year, and the early milestones have arrived: the backing of the publishers at WB Productions, worldwide distribution through Sony and The Orchard, and a roster that already features an interesting artist in Nys and the halfsoul, who released their first album with us. The label will also be involved in producing singles for the institute's most deserving students — because that too, at its core, is training.
In the whirlwind of all these stimuli, this summer is proving a precious time to study, to go deeper, to train myself in fields still new to me.
Personal training has always been a fixed point in my way of living: relentless, never-finished work on bettering oneself.
And so the wish I have for whoever is reading this is the same one I make to myself every day: improve. Push beyond your own limits. Never settle for your certainties, but keep questioning them constantly.
Because evolving isn't an option. It's the only way I know to stay alive in what I do.
