What got you into making neo-classical music?
Edoardo: Dear Francoise and La Musique Team, thank you for having me here.
I started making modern classical and neo-classical music back in late 2020.
It all started without a spark or a certain decisive moment. I just loved music and once
started creating it.
But the actual turning point appeared thanks to a colleague and friend called Lukasz
Czarnecki.
Once, back in 2020, I was creating drafts and sharing these privately. He listened to
something and pushed me to create more consistently and publish my music
compositions in the direction of soundtracks and film-like music, by linking them to my
actual name “Edoardo Gastaldi” as official composer and producer on the Digital
Platforms.
Thanks to him, I released my first ever solo track ‘Negative Entropy’ under his own
Record Label, and I also teamed up with him and another wonderful person called
Marcin Skruch for a more significant project.
They introduced me to the Music Department Team for a short film named ‘Infant’. I
worked as an additional music composer for the soundtrack of the short horror clip. I will
be forever thankful for these opportunities that, as a domino effect, opened the doors to
the countless facts and goals that have been happening from then on.
‘I Am Here and You Are Mine’ is a gorgeous melody. What was it that inspired the piece?
Edoardo: Thank you for the splendid words about my recent solo piano act. This music was
inspired by quite an unfortunate (yet fortunate), dense, and fast sequel of events. It was
the summer of 2023. Most likely one of the best times of my life in terms of
opportunities. I traveled around Italy and Europe for some music-related events in which
I was actively involved, I leveled up in some Academic-related fields, I composed quite
some original music in my basement, and I had a relevant flow of people coming into
my life, and an equal amount of others parting with me. So, all in all, a blooming yet
extremely destabilizing time. The mentioned are mostly the good sides of things, but life
is life and these crests were also counterbalanced by troughs in the waves of
happenings and the criticality of situations. It has been a time of change. And in a time of change, a person needs habits. I lost habits because every day was different from the
previous.
Suddenly this needed habit came from the outside, and it was a person! She naturally
set a routine in my weeks by being around and following me for coffee breaks and
lunches in the grass under the sun. In one of these moments, I was feeling
overwhelmed by thoughts and by the anticipation of what I had to do, that I broke down
in tears. It never happened before to me so that was quite an unlucky scene. But she
was there and without asking what was it all about, she decided to mess her daily plans
up and spend the following hours until sundown walking, watching the clouds, and chit-
chatting with me. I am a very self-critical, rational, and philosophical person, so this time
of unreal lightness was exactly what I didn’t know I needed. Her actions that day, later
made me think of sealing this moment into something. And so ‘I Am Here and You Are
Mine’ was born.
What is the best thing about being a musician?
Edoardo: The best part about writing music is probably the fact that as a creator I feel I have the possibility of sealing impermanent things in a (likely) permanent state. I write about moments, fragments, conversations, people, relationships, situations. I will eventually part with people and places, but if I seal something in music, it stays there forever.
And what is the most difficult?
Edoardo: I will give a direct and instinctual answer to that question. The most difficult part about music, is life. Being involved in something as deep as fragile as the creation of something eats my time up, it makes me overthink and exaggerate the relevance of details, I start to think the way I write, and write the way I think. And while I am lost in this, life keeps going. I feel like I am losing touch with everyone. I feel like my feet don’t touch the ground. I feel like someday I may wake up being years or decades older and not realising it. Because I’m still stuck somewhere as other people progress in the common sense of life chores and stuff.
Do you have one song in your discography that is the most special to you?
Edoardo: I am certain that at this point each one of my collaborators hopes to see the name of our track here. I must be sincere, and I loved each and every project that I have done so far. I know I am famous for my diplomacy. But I will force myself to dare and choose. All I do has a meaning to me. If I really had to choose among all, just based on the depth of the meaning, I’d go for ‘Coelum Enim Hoc in Deo Consistit’ and ‘Waltz of the Dial and Hands’. Because these tracks merely talk about life and death, they gather all the meanings of creation and destruction, of hope and loss. In a certain sense, they tell about the path of a human being and they especially enlighten the fact that we will leave, at some point. So what’s left? What’s that remains? These are very dense tracks, and if listened to in an uneven mood, may really put a focused listener into paranoia. Because they destroy every socially driven certainty by saying “Hey you, yes you that are listening, you are not special, time is ticking. You’ll be in the sky. SO just wake up and do something good out of this time.”
What is the best piece of advice you’ve received as a musician?
Edoardo: This comes from Fabrizio Brugnera. Once he told me to keep the truth at the top of the hierarchy. Always. It is the trajectory for maintaining a deep artistic direction and a crystalline way of self-expression. I will always remember this. Let yourself be a means of expression for your music, and never allow music to surrender and be a means for the ego’s behaviour. It’s music above you, not you above music. If the second appears, then an artist easily creates for the sake of money, tendencies, convenience, hits. If the first happens, no matter the surroundings and the potential outcome, the artist just expresses the self.
So you’ve been releasing singles since 2021. Are you planning on releasing a
bigger project in the near future?
Edoardo: I have been releasing since 2021, and I will keep doing. I have quite a list of great
projects that are about to be released in late 2023 and in 2024. These include solo
piano compositions for the Label ‘PaKo Music Records’, appearances in upcoming
Album projects of the artists Marko Zoric, Ostel, and Kilometre Club; plus several single
collaborations with other international minds, and so on.
The bigger personal project consists of a physical CD that may include the pills or the
best of my early works.
Thank you La Musique for the space and for this interview.
Musicians, buy your musical instruments here!
Music lovers, buy your favourite music here!
You can listen to ‘I Am Here and You Are Mine’ here:
