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Varazze 1964, the inevitable singing
competition. |
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BEGINNINGS
Silvio Capeccia was born in Milan on 30th June 1957. He
begins to take private piano tuition at the age of 11 and
at the age of 15 he starts to make music in the most typical
way for a teenager: becoming a member of a college band.
In the New Kary, a hall specially built for rehearsal which
doesn’t exist anymore, a “Liceo Scientifico” classmate
introduces him to a certain Enrico Ruggeri, a bass player
his same age attending the “Liceo Classico”.
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between Silvio and Enrico there is a magical mutual understanding
that, musically speaking, produces the most interesting
fruits.
Meanwhile around them
everybody celebrates the ephemeral triumph of the disco-music,
the two young musicians discover the elegant rock of Brian Ferry’s Roxy
Music, the decadentism of “Kimono my house” by Sparks, Bowie’s
ambiguity in “Space Oddity”, Lou Reed’s fierceness in “Rock’n
roll animal”.
The group, ironically
named “Champagne Molotov”,
includes Silvio Capeccia on keyboards and second voice,
Enrico Ruggeri on bass and lead vocal and other musicians
that in succession become part of the group.
With such an innovatory and sparkling repertoire, which soon becomes a life
style to counteract the extreme politicisation of so many people their same
age, in 1974 the band begins to gain experience playing amongst difficulties
and impediments in various schools of Milan.
Sooner or later some producers would have taken notice of them.
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Sixteen years old, the beginnings on the stage of “Liceo
Einstein” of
Milan. |
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DECIBEL
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Once finished high school, Silvio Capeccia
feels the necessity to enlarge his experience and goes to the Bocconi University
of Milan to attend Marketing and Advertising, certainly the most creative
course amongst the different ones offered at the Faculty of Economics.
From a musical point of view, while Enrico
Ruggeri continues his activity on the footsteps
of the rising British punk rock, Silvio
Capeccia starts experimenting the possibilities
offered by
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The “Champagne
Molotov” college band: from left Osvaldo
Filippi, Enrico Ruggeri, Pigi Billone and Silvio
Capeccia.
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multitrack recording and builds
himself a rudimentary home studio using
an Akai tape recorder, a rustling echo
effect, a four channels mixer and a Crumar
analogue synthesizer. It is the first works
of the English composer Brian Eno, always
looking for new involving and
contemplative sounds, that intrigues Silvio’s
musical sensitivity and that drives him to
focus on a personal vision of instrumental
music. But clearly times are not ripe yet.
In 1978 Enrico Ruggeri gets in touch with his
old friend to ask him to become part of the newborn
group Decibel, with the objective of forming a
band capable to present to the audience the Italian
way to an original and refined rock.
Silvio joins
in with enthusiasm. Together with the guitar player
Fulvio Muzio, the bass player Mino Riboni and the
drummer Tommy Minazzi, the band retires for some
time in a school in Corbetta, west of Milan, where
they polish their repertoire and sonorities.
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It
is in 1980 when the Decibel, under
contract with the record company
Spaghetti-Rca, take part at the
Festival di Sanremo (the famous
Italian musical competition) gaining
a fourth place with the song “Contessa” written
by Muzio and Ruggeri, an atypical
piece in the Kurt Weill’s
cabaret style.
As a consequence of the sensational
success accompanying the participation
to the Festival di Sanremo, the Decibel
tour Italy for the following two
years, doing concerts, radio and
television shows and interviews for
the press. The album “Vivo
da re” is published and Silvio
Capeccia is the author of the music
of five songs including “Vivo
da re”, a song of great and
long lasting success which is still
included in compilations and various
collections at more than twenty years
distance. |
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Sanremo Festival 1980: from left Fulvio Muzio,
Silvio Capeccia, Enrico Ruggeri (hiding
Sergio
Nicosia) and Mino Riboni. |
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The
album is recorded at the Stone Castle Studios in
Carimate with the artistic production of the legendary
Shel Shapiro and Silvio has the possibility to
meet professional keyboard players and sound engineers
from whom he can learn the fundamentals of the
electronic synthesis and recording. He also finds
the time, between one concert and an interview,
to get a degree at the Bocconi University
with top
marks disserting a thesis on the life span
of consumer goods from market launch to the
final stage.
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A
title that foresees somehow the end of
a musical period, as Ruggeri takes the
decision to continue his career as a
soloist while the Decibel in 1992 release
the album “Novecento”.
The songs, written by Muzio and Capeccia
who is also the vocalist, enlighten a romantic-decadent
inspiration musically influenced by the
English electronic rock.
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Few months after the launch of the record,
Fulvio Muzio moves to the United States
to continue with his studies and Silvio
Capeccia, after publishing with Livio
Garattini the book “Farmaci economia
salute” (“Pensiero Scientifico” publisher),
can go back to what he had began a
few years before, researching new sonorities
and musical dimensions.
He attends a specialisation course on harmony
and composition at the School of Music
of Milan, sells the old instruments to
acquire a new set up of keyboards and electronic
equipment and starts a new journey to discover
what someone in England already calls “Ambient
music”. |
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The
last formation of the Decibel
after releasing “Novecento”:
from left Fulvio Muzio,
Silvio Capeccia, Maurilio
Menzinger and Andrea Milanesi.
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Times are now ripe.
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AMBIENT MUSIC
“The
ambient music is not frontally aggressive, but
slowly spreads in the air to envelop and surround
from every side; it is an apparently static music,
which in reality moves sinuously with an imperceptible
and never ending mutation”.
These words are the manifesto that inspires the
musical conception of Silvio Capeccia.
The first work in this direction, commissioned
at the beginnings of the 90’s by the
Cultural Association “Obiettivo sul mondo,’’ is
the soundtrack for geographical documentaries set
in Central America and the Far East. Such documentaries
are screened in some cinemas in Lombardy with a
good success and one of them “La terra dei
Maya” is available on video.
The composition of soundtracks is followed by some
so-called “Musical backgrounds” that
the actor Maurilio Menzinger Biasior utilises in
the theatrical performance “Umani
ed altri estranei” (“Human
beings and other aliens”).
This is a series of science fiction short stories
written in the 50’s by Fredric Brown (a cult
author in this gender) that becomes the ideal background
for a new sound exploration finalized to build
up a tense and worrying atmosphere around the voice
of the actor.
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At
the same time, Capeccia keeps on working
together with Muzio and the producer
Shel Shapiro under the brand “Decibel” and
at the beginning of 1998 the independent
Californian label Mp3.com publishes the
instrumental CD “Desaparecida”.
This album, where passion and spirituality
live together, includes “Pranayama” that
reaches the second place in the Internet
New age Chart.
Once finished recording they fly to La
Habana where they stay for a month to shoot
a video clip with the same title and directed
by Angelo Longoni. This is exactly a month
before Cuba becomes a land to conquer for
Wim Wenders and hordes of European tourists.
Some time later after coming back to Italy,
the band presents the whole works (CD and
video clip) in a live concert at the Villasanta
Auditorium, where Silvio will take the
decision to put an end to his long lasting
collaboration with Decibel.
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The team of “Desaparecida” during
a pause at the Top Studio of Canneto: from
left the producer Shel Shapiro, Silvio
Capeccia, the musical arranger Marco Zanoni
and Fulvio Muzio (standing).
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Towards the end of the ‘90s, Capeccia moves
into the field of the electronic music. “Voices” are
nine tracks characterised by the presence of
voices based on common people conversations,
radio speeches and other situations caught on
the road. Part of this collection is “Poke-monks”,
a pure Gregorian chant with some disquieting
techno superimpositions, which stays on the top
in the Internet Ambient music Chart for two weeks
running up tens of thousands in downloads.
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Capeccia's live performances are a most uncommon occurrence: in 2004 he released at Teatro Blu of Milan the project "Ambient piano music", an event of music, offstage voices and fading images. Then played the pianoforte during two unplugged concerts of his old friend Enrico Ruggeri, and recently produced with the actor Maurilio Biasior the pièce "An island inside an island", ambient music for seven tales.
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Today Silvio Capeccia composes only ambient music.
No contracts, no commercial budgets, no producers: just a lonely, amazing journey towards a vision of pure and unique ambient music.
Every artistic event, a pictures exhibition, a multimedia performance as well as a theatre monologue, increases its aesthetic quality when the right ambient music surrounds the event itself.
In the future even no-art events could probably benefit from the support of a musical ambience: convention speeches, wellness hotels, food store departments... Silvio is going to work in this direction.
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29 March 2004: “Ambient piano music” at the Teatro Blu of Milan. |
Esposizione del pittore Aldo Vendrame con ambient music di Silvio Capeccia. | From the technical point of view, Silvio Capeccia creates "drift compositions", featuring slow moving melodies, non-developmental forms, repeating events, harmonic quietness. The final result is a gentle atmosphere that invites the listener in rather than pushes the music itself upon you.
This concept of music as a "continuo" suggests a comparison with the close world of painting, where Piet Mondrian wrote "...what you call a rectangle is a false shape, because the four lines touch each other but they keep on moving without end..."
His compositions are released on the Internet, into the ambient sections of the main indie music sites. If you go to "Music listening" page you can listen to and download some Silvio's ambient tracks. |
“…an apparently
static music, which in reality moves sinuously with
an imperceptible and never ending mutation”. |
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