THE MOST STREAMED CLASSICAL ARTIST OF ALL TIMELUDOVICO EINAUDISIGNS NEW WORLDWIDE DEAL WITH DECCA & UNVEILS HIS BIGGEST MUSIC PROJECT YET…‘SEVEN DAYS WALKING’: SEVEN ALBUMS IN SEVEN MONTHS
London, 1 March, 2019 – One of the most successful musicians on the planet, the groundbreaking composer and pianist Ludovico Einaudi, today announces his signing of a new worldwide contract with Decca Records. After nearly 15 years and six album releases together, Decca – the world’s No.1 classical music label – is thrilled to renew its working relationship with Einaudi and be the home to his music not only in the UK but also globally. This news comes as Einaudi also reveals the most ambitious project of his 30-year career, and the first for a classical composer.
Einaudi, whose unique musical style is renowned around the world, repeatedly tops the classical charts globally with his hauntingly beautiful and evocative music. With over 1 million streams a day the pianist has clocked up a staggering 2 billion streams, making him the biggest streamed classical artist of all time. Einaudi’s last album, ‘Elements’, released in 2015, saw him become the first classical composer in over 20 years to reach the Top 15 of the Official UK Album Charts.
President & CEO of Global Classics & Jazz, Universal, Dickon Stainer, says: “Ludovico Einaudi is an artist with a uniquely global footprint whose music continues to draw a dedicated and dynamic audience. We are thrilled and honoured to extend our relationship with him throughout the world”
President of Decca Records, Rebecca Allen, adds: “Ludovico Einaudi is without doubt one of the most innovative and inspiring artists that our label has the privilege to work alongside. His music connects in a way that unites audiences around the world. We feel truly blessed that our partnership continues to grow and we can further support the unique vision of this utterly brilliant artist.”
2019 sees the release of ‘Seven Days Walking’: seven bodies of music to be released over seven consecutive months. The first, ‘Seven Days Walking: Day One’, which interweaves piano and strings in his unmistakable style, is Einaudi’s 14th studio album and will be released on 15th March, on Decca. ‘Seven Days Walking: Day Two’ follows a month later. Each ‘day’ is then released, digitally, a month apart, leading up to ‘Day Seven’ which will be released in the autumn in a box-set of the complete Seven Days.
The first single from ‘Day 1’, ‘Cold Wind’, is released today.
Inspiration for the entire project derived from walks that Einaudi would take through the mountains in winter. He explains, “In January last year I often went for long walks in the mountains, always following more or less the same trail. It snowed heavily, and my thoughts roamed free inside the storm, where all shapes, stripped bare by the cold, lost their contours and colours. Perhaps that feeling of extreme essence was the origin of this album.”
The first album focuses on several main themes, which then recur in different forms on the following albums – seven variations following the same imaginary itinerary. Or the same itinerary, retraced at seven different times.
Elaborating further, the composer says “In the end I decided to thread them all together in a sort of musical labyrinth, a little like stepping inside the twists and turns of the creative process, to understand how a musical idea can develop in multiple directions, and changing once again at the moment in which it is heard.”
‘Seven Days Walking’ was recorded between September and October of last year in Schloss Elmau, Germany and London’s Air Studios, and features the highly talented Federico Mecozzi on violin and viola and Redi Hasa on cello, alongside Ludovico himself on piano.
Einaudi will be playing two live shows at London’s Union Chapel on 28th and 29th March (which sold out in record time once again), and will announce a further string of UK 2019 dates, as part of an extensive global tour, in due course.