Chiara Civello

“Songs are like trains; they take you from one place to another. This collection of songs, I think, is my train home,” says Chiara Civello, in describing her second album, The Space Between, due out this Fall on Universal Music.

Sultry voice, poetic lyrics and surprising harmonies are just a part of the recipe that makes Chiara's music so irresistible. Her second album shows us a much more intimate and immediate side of the singer songwriter, and leads us through a journey of thirteen beautiful moments where we feel we can get really close to her.

“This is a record about ‘the space between’. The space between the notes, the silence between words, the space between me and you, me and my past, me and my future, and all the spaces between that nowadays are so difficult to stop and think about….the space between that makes you feel the reality better, the space that makes you miss someone, the space between that makes you not say everything all at once, but bit by bit, as the need of saying it gets stronger in you. The space between what I think and what I say… In Italy, we have a saying: Between saying and doing, there is the sea.”

At the beginning of the creative process, Chiara called an old friend, Pete Rende.
“Pete always moves me…when his hands touch the keyboard, you feel the meaning of everything he wants to say, note by note, pause by pause…” The pair spent a lot of time together, talking about music, sipping margaritas and eating Tex Mex in Park Slope, Brooklyn. “We focused on all the things I love: the 60s, bossa nova, desert islands, running (or running away?), and good food. Pete really helped me to stay true. He encouraged me to keep playing the guitar, from which songs kept coming out like rain…”

In addition to Pete, Chiara turned to other friends to play on the album, including Ben Street (Danilo Perez, Kurt Rosenwinkel, David Sanchez, Paul Motian) on bass, Tony Mason (Norah Jones, Joan Osborne, Bo Diddley) on drums, Guilherme Monteiro (Elian Elias, Lila Downs, Joao Bosco, Slide Hampton) on guitar, and Mauro Refosco (Lounge Lizards, David Byrne, Bebel Gilberto) on percussion andTony Sherr (Bill Frisell, Willie Nelson, Lounge Lizards, Sex Mob)“The musicians on this record are all my friends. To create something so close to my heart, I figured I didn’t have to go far from home at all. These are among the best musicians in New York. I play live with them, so I had the opportunity to play out the songs way before they were recorded and was able to develop the sound I really wanted.” Producer Steve Addabbo (Suzanne Vega, Shawn Colvin, Sonya Kitchell) provided Chiara with the right space, with transparent arrangements and warm, light-handed production.

Chiara explores the space between through a variety of well-crafted songs, written alone and with collaborators. “After my first record, I picked up the guitar and combined my profound love for bossa nova with the need for finding a simple place within, from where things could flow, simple and true….The guitar is an instrument that allows me to feel extremely comfortable with not knowing what I’m doing…not having a name for every chord. I just go where it takes me…the power of forgetting over learning.”

Chiara remembers how a few of the songs came about:

“Born to Sail Away is the very first song I wrote for the new record. I wrote it in 2005, and it’s funny, as Rilke says, how the future enters in your life way before the facts, way before you know it…Who would have known that the whole CD would feature the guitar?”

“If You Ever Think of Me is the first song I ever wrote where I started from the lyric. At first, the chorus said: ‘I really need you now but I wonder all the time, if your space between us is as full of us as mine”. Then I figured it was too brainy, and came up with a much more ‘figurative’ way of saying it: ‘’Cause you and I, are never under the same sky.’ Short, simple and true….unfortunately.”

“Isola (which means “island”) is one of my favorite songs. Rocco Papaleo and I met through common friends on the island of Stromboli last summer while we were both resting from our tours. From the moment we met, we spent a few hours every morning on the terrace of our house overlooking the sea, with the guitar and coffee, writing. I had never written with an Italian artist before, and Rocco really made me feel at home. I had a melody; we had a lyric for Isola.”

“Seagulls is a song that I started in Rockaway Beach in Brooklyn, NY, in the company of a good friend and my cousin, and that I finished in Stromboli, in the company of other really good friends, watching some of the best sunsets and drinking great Sicilian wine.”

“One day, I was having a really hard time, and I turned to Pete and told him: ‘Do you know what one of the songs I love the most? Skylark!’ And he said, ‘me, too.’ So for the next three hours, we tried to figure out a way to play it with the few chords I could pull off on the guitar straight from our hearts without looking at charts, so that it felt like it was written for me. For the next week, all I did was play Skylark and sing Skylark…. And Skylark and Pete took me to a better place.”

Chiara was born in Rome and grew up playing her grandma’s piano. She attended a private music school, where she studied jazz and started singing professionally. While there she won a scholarship to the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she studied under trombonist Harold Crook, sax players Ed Tomassi and Jerry Bergonzi, among others. After a few years in the Boston club scene, Chiara moved to New York, where she immersed herself in Latin and Brazilian music and started writing songs.

Produced by Russ Titelman, Chiara’s debut album Last Quarter Moon was released on Verve in 2005. Billboard Magazine noted that, “the beauty, charm and allure of singer/pianist/songwriter Chiara Civello’s debut…makes for an auspicious beginning and marks the first revelation of the New Year.” The International Herald Tribune declared “her combination of personality, soulfulness and sophistication…striking.”

Called “the best jazz singer of her generation” by Tony Bennett, Chiara Civello lives up to that acclaim with her second release; one that will leave listeners contemplating the beauty of her voice and her songs and the space between.