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Why do I Whistle?
I have been whistling since I was little.
It always came naturally to me, even though nobody in the family I lived with whistled.
Only my father used to whistle, but I never lived with him for more than 15 days, so he would not have been able to teach me.
When I was just 6 years old, I used to whistle opera arias, and my mother would show me off to her friends. Whistling was both a pleasure and a safety valve for me. You're never sad when you're whistling. Interpreting a melody by whistling means hearing it resonate in your body, especially in your head, even more so than when you sing. This sound completely takes you over. It's like singing with your mouth closed... in secret. It's a sound that is yours alone, where you can escape and forget everything.
A few years ago, thanks to a very dear friend, the great jazz singer Ada Montellanico, I whistled in public for the first time. It was her birthday, and she was celebrating it in a historic club in Rome, doing duets with her jazz friends, all of them very well known. We performed a piece together, and I realized that I wasn't nervous at all. Strange.
They say it's very difficult to stay in tune when you whistle. Like keeping your balance on a tightrope. But for me, it is not like that; for me, whistling is the most natural thing in the world, like speaking, eating, driving.
Then I had some incredible good luck. I met a great musician, Lincoln Almada, and by working with him, I realized that I could take the next step.
Lincoln is not just an extraordinary harpist, an artist with limitless technique and a sensitive heart. He is, above all, one of those rare people who make you feel the reason for what you are doing. With his guidance and help, I realized that I could use my innate talent and turn it into a tool for artistic research.
Whistling has always been considered a curiosity, a cabaret act. There are virtuosic whistlers who imitate birds or musical instruments perfectly, doing things of insane technical difficulty. They are wonderful jugglers and tightrope walkers, but it's hard for them to make music. But that is my objective, even if whistling is more of an aggravating factor for a woman. Women could not whistle without being chastised; it was considered something improper and ill-mannered. In many primitive societies, it was a dangerous sound that attracted evil spirits. In "Mefistofele" by Arrigo Boito, it is the voice of the devil.
But I see its beauty. It can be sensual and angelic at the same time. It's a strange, disturbing sound, always precariously balanced between a pure note and a shrill one. And yet it can be very beautiful, incredibly intimate. Because the voice can be planned and developed, but whistling is the person's soul without filters.
I studied for 5 years with Lincoln, and thanks to him, who is now the artistic director of this project, and thanks to all the other great musicians that accompanied me, I've been able to accomplish something that I think has no precedent: attempting to use whistling as an expressive musical form in its own right.
Whistling as singing, as an account of the soul, because as I just said, it's the most human of all sounds, the least infallible.
I have been whistling since I was little.
It always came naturally to me, even though nobody in the family I lived with whistled.
Only my father used to whistle, but I never lived with him for more than 15 days, so he would not have been able to teach me.
When I was just 6 years old, I used to whistle opera arias, and my mother would show me off to her friends. Whistling was both a pleasure and a safety valve for me. You're never sad when you're whistling. Interpreting a melody by whistling means hearing it resonate in your body, especially in your head, even more so than when you sing. This sound completely takes you over. It's like singing with your mouth closed... in secret. It's a sound that is yours alone, where you can escape and forget everything.
A few years ago, thanks to a very dear friend, the great jazz singer Ada Montellanico, I whistled in public for the first time. It was her birthday, and she was celebrating it in a historic club in Rome, doing duets with her jazz friends, all of them very well known. We performed a piece together, and I realized that I wasn't nervous at all. Strange.
They say it's very difficult to stay in tune when you whistle. Like keeping your balance on a tightrope. But for me, it is not like that; for me, whistling is the most natural thing in the world, like speaking, eating, driving.
Then I had some incredible good luck. I met a great musician, Lincoln Almada, and by working with him, I realized that I could take the next step.
Lincoln is not just an extraordinary harpist, an artist with limitless technique and a sensitive heart. He is, above all, one of those rare people who make you feel the reason for what you are doing. With his guidance and help, I realized that I could use my innate talent and turn it into a tool for artistic research.
Whistling has always been considered a curiosity, a cabaret act. There are virtuosic whistlers who imitate birds or musical instruments perfectly, doing things of insane technical difficulty. They are wonderful jugglers and tightrope walkers, but it's hard for them to make music. But that is my objective, even if whistling is more of an aggravating factor for a woman. Women could not whistle without being chastised; it was considered something improper and ill-mannered. In many primitive societies, it was a dangerous sound that attracted evil spirits. In "Mefistofele" by Arrigo Boito, it is the voice of the devil.
But I see its beauty. It can be sensual and angelic at the same time. It's a strange, disturbing sound, always precariously balanced between a pure note and a shrill one. And yet it can be very beautiful, incredibly intimate. Because the voice can be planned and developed, but whistling is the person's soul without filters.
I studied for 5 years with Lincoln, and thanks to him, who is now the artistic director of this project, and thanks to all the other great musicians that accompanied me, I've been able to accomplish something that I think has no precedent: attempting to use whistling as an expressive musical form in its own right.
Whistling as singing, as an account of the soul, because as I just said, it's the most human of all sounds, the least infallible.
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