ARIA – NEW ALBUM

Aria New Album by Christian Lavernier

In 2019, while I was walking through the streets of Paris, my eyes saw a small book on the ground. It was “Oscariana” by Oscar Wilde. I looked in vain for its owner: the book was brand new, just bought with the receipt still inside. I couldn’t find anyone who claimed it, so I decided to take it home with me. A few days later, I started to write the first track of this record, “Oscariana”, with the idea of layering different layers of sound. I have always dreamed of playing with my own self, but for one reason or another, I have never found the way to make it possible. This could have been the right opportunity. La Soñada could follow me on this journey, in fact I think it traced the path even before I played the first note. I decided to overdub three tracks one on top of the other, three Soñadas, three lines, three me. This work has required about two years of study and the construction of individual scores, as if they were three different instruments and three instrumentalists who meet in Paris on any given day and decide to make music together. I explored further the possibilities of this wonderful eleven-stringed instrument, its colours, working on the live sound, its character. I have known (or maybe, re-known) those three completely different musicians, with their fears and their own ways of seeing the music. It’s a work that gathers the personal listenings and sonorities of many years of life, from Classical music to Contemporary music, passing through Jazz.I tried to bring together these three musicians who have hated and loved each other, and who in the end decided to make music together, without having any expectation other than finding a sound and personal image that could truly represent them. It has been an exciting journey, sometimes frightening, like all journeys, and like all journeys it has come to an end. “Aria” like that we breathe, “Aria” like the breath of a wind that I did not know and that has been my daily companion during these two years of research.