Ida Landsberg - Jazz Sessions (2018)

Music is in my life since I can think. In my case music always had been present but for a long time it wasn’t at the centre of my thinking and activities yet. It was more an accompaniment of every of my daily actions, an accessory, an atmosphere, a song to sing or an open ear for sounds and noises. I always had a very sensible ear that hated rumors and couldn’t tolerate notes that weren’t perfectly clean. Who loved high and clear voices and memorized melodies quickly.

I didn’t grow up in an artist environment even though my grand-grandmother, from which I had my name Ida, was a sculpturist and lived surrounded by famous 19th Century painters in Kleinmachnow just outside Berlin. One of her friends were Max Liebermann. I know her only from my father’s tellings.

I passed my childhood and adolescence by studying languages, literature and science, but music was my everyday companion, my friend, my breathe.

That doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t have been in constant contact with music making.

In my earliest childhood, I sang on my grandmother’s balcony and the neighbors listened to me. At the age of 6 I started to play piano, to sing in a church choir and to be part of a children dance theatre.

Also my family enjoyed music. My grandmother played piano, my father accordeon and my mother guitar. They wanted to give us a good musical education.

My mother was the one who raise my love for classical music as she took me to the opera house since I was a child. I knew all the arias of Mozart’s “Magical Flute” by heart and sang them the whole day long. She was also the one who forced me to practice piano everyday when I was about to quit at the age of 13. I couldn’t be any more thankful that she insisted.

I was very active at school performances.

After a long and intense 70s musical rebel period in my adolescence at the sound of the The Doors, Janis Joplin and the Beach Boys, I discovered jazz music which would have been my strongest passion. Charlie Parker and Dave Brubeck had become my new heroes, Nina Simone and Ella Fitzgerald my idols.

Soon the desire of letting music be a central part of my life became concrete.

I was admitted to the Berlin University of Fine Arts and studied music pedagogy there until I left Germany for a student exchange program. My time at the UdK was one of the greatest I can remember. I had a female a cappella trio, sang in different choirs and we made plenty of University productions. It was a busy and fun period.

In Italy I continued my musical studies at the Siena Jazz School, took private singing and improvisation lessons and attended different master classes.

I knew my guitarist and now husband Simone Salvatore and I remained in Tuscany for sentimental reasons. We started to play gigs in clubs, theatres and festivals.

From now on I experienced the completest fulfilment as a singer: sharing my music with other people and letting them feel what I always felt.

The sensation of feeling alive by making music. Of stopping time by letting music be the protagonist of the moment. Of giving words to the unpronounceable. The joy to feel its unifying and enhancing power. Of being one. Its endless beauty. Pure emotion. Art. Sometimes.

We played also at numerous weddings and private partys. Some of the funniest and most memorable moments are linked to some strange or unusual musical situation.

I had the pleasure to collaborate with many wonderful musicians.

And then one day I received an email from Singapore that I was about to move to the spam folder. But then I read it and after I read it again, and it sounded quite serious. They were asking for some music samples for their label and I decided to send them. And they liked them and wanted to release my works.

This was the beginning of a great collaboration with EQ Music Singapore, Hitman Jazz and later Irma Records with whom I released 4 solo albums for now – jazz and bossa nova as well as one album with my own compositions – and many compilations. And others are about to be realized.

Music is my aim and ambition, my continuous research and look to the future. No day passes without having some idea or project to realize, something new to create or experience, some unexperienced music style to live. Some notes left to write or to sing.

Music for me is not a passion. It is a necessity.

Track List:
01. Blue Moon (4:57)
02. They Can't Take That Away From Me (3:27)
03. Angel Eyes (3:34)
04. Fly Me To The Moon (4:20)
05. From This Moment On (3:41)
06. Close To You (4:09)
07. How High The Moon (3:42)
08. Cry Me A River (3:43)
09. Don't Take Your Love From Me (3:54)
10. Night And Day (4:26)

Personnel:
Ida Landsberg - vo, perc
Domenico Sanna - p
Marco Guidolotti - bars
Simone Salvatore - g
Dario Rosciglione - b
Andrea Nunzi - d

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