James Pearson
Hello, and welcome back to Cast of Creatives, the series dedicated to exploring creative work, and the effect that this has on mental health and well being. Now I’m joined today by a very, very special guest Massimiliano, welcome to the show, it’s great to have you here.
Massimiliano Greco
Hello everyone, and thank you for this kind invitation, it’s my pleasure to be here.
James Pearson
Fantastic so Massimiliano you are amongst many, many things, a pianist and composer, but can you just tell everybody a little bit about yourself and the work that you do?
Massimiliano Greco
So, I am an Italian composer, but I was trained mostly for being a concert pianist, you can say. So my background is like that. So big, big names of classical music, so Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Beethoven and so on. At a certain point of my life when I was already doing many concertos, I also I started to be interested in composing for ballet. And so my life at the moment goes inside the two words. So, classical and ballet. And so I have connection with mainly choreographers, mainly ballet masters and sometimes I compose also for them. So my music sometimes is, with the idea of being pure music,and sometimes exactly for dance. This is almost my life nowadays.
James Pearson
Wonderful, wonderful. So you have just released a new album called “Love Stories”?
Massimiliano Greco
Love Stories ,yes, this is my last album. This is a collection of music that I composed in the past, and also during the last year. Inside there, there are pieces dedicated to ballet work, above all with the idea of creating music for ballet work and some music that is composed like pure music. It’s strange, because when I say pure music, I have to say that at the same time, mainly of my pure pieces, pure music pieces, they have been taken by choreographers to become also music for choreography. Anyway, it was not my goal in the moment of the composition to think about that. In that situation, maybe my composition reminded someone of something to be danced to, maybe, I don’t know. But inside this album you can find also something that has been already been danced. For example, the most famous piece was danced in Europe and in China. So we had a couple of Premiere for this song that is called “La Seconda Vita”. But in reality, this music with that name, has another name, as a ballet piece. And so, it’s strange because sometimes, the choreographer will change names, and my music gets changed a little bit. So I have to specify my use, my music may be this way, but the name of the ballet is another one. It happens many times, but it’s okay.
