Luca D’Alberto is a composer, producer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist, born and raised in Abruzzo, in the heart of Italy.
His introduction to music came when he was a kid; his mother, afraid that he would break it, used to hide a music box around the house, but Luca, obsessed with it, would seek it out every time. “When I was 12, I learnt that that melody I had been obsessed with had been created by Nino Rota, and in that same moment I decided, without fully realizing it, that I wanted to be a composer.”
D’Alberto graduated summa cum laude in viola and violin and at the Conservatory of his hometown in Abruzzo. By means of his classical studies he learned the make-up of the classical canon, and was later motivated to break it apart. Behind a solid classical formation, D’Alberto learnt to use electronics as a mean to amplify the expressive power of acoustic instruments such as piano, strings, drums of oriental tradition, gongs, Tibetan quartz bells.
After several experiences in different musical outfits and collaborations in both the recording and the live environments, in 2017 he released his debut album ‘Endless’, on the newly-formed label 7K!. Having auditioned as a potential string arranger for Tricky, D’Alberto inspired his manager, who also owned Berlin-based label !K7, to start a neo-classical imprint with the pecific aim of releasing his music.
Luca described this album as “the soundtrack of a movie, the timeless movie of our lives; one which speaks of the never ending interaction between mankind and feelings”. It is a passionate reimagining of neo-classical music: passionate and daring, capable of jumping out from the shadows at you.
As would become consistent throughout his career, the album was entirely composed and performed by D’Alberto, who only used traditional instruments.
Endless was engineered by Martyn Heyne, with additional production by Henrik Schwarz. After the considerable success of Endless, D’Alberto quickly followed up with a second album on 7K!: ‘Exile’ was released in october 2018.
To fine-tune the eight tracks of Exile, D’Alberto isolated himself for weeks looking for a dimension where he could set his emotions free, and transform them into music. This resulted in a set of compositions built around unforgettable melodies, incisive crescendos culminating in explosive resolutions; layers of hidden elements slowly emerging and chasing each other; all this is with an eye to cinematic atmospheres, both delicate and powerful, vigorous and melancholic, inspired by D’Alberto’s love for cinema and soundtracks – a love which he was to exploit later in his career.
This delicate operation was brought about in collaboration with the composer and multi- instrumentalist Patrick Christensen aka PC Nackt, musical director and co-founder of the String Theory project and producer of Apparat among many other artists.
Film makers, dance companies and theatres quickly recognized the talent of Luca, who after earning praise from Wim and Donata Wenders, Peter Lindbergh and Lars Von Trier’s Zentropa Entertainments was eventually asked to collaborate, as a composer and performer, with the prestigious Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch; with italian film and theater directors
Michele Placido and Costanza Quatriglio; and with Peter Greenaway and Saskia Boddeke, who asked him to compose the music for the installations ‘Obedience’, held at the Jewish Museum in Berlin, and ‘Chtchoukine, Matisse, la Danse et la Musique’, held at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris.
Luca’s vision would also and eventually make an impression in the world of advertisement, with companies such as Apple and Lancome and the Wimbledon tennis championships choosing to feature his music in their campaigns, as have many films, TV shows and trailers in recent years.
2022 will see the debut of his collaboration with Decca Records, inaugurated by his taking part to the collaborative effort of ‘Legrand (re)Imagined’, along with artists like Chilly Gonzales and Moux.
