INTERVIEW: Jonathan Cilia Faro finds inspiration in Luciano Pavarotti
Photo: Jonathan Cilia Faro will pay tribute to Luciano Pavarotti at a special New York City concert. Photo courtesy of the artist / Provided by Doreen D’Agostino Media with permission.
Monday, Oct. 14 will be a special day for singer Jonathan Cilia Faro. That night at the Masonic Lodge in New York City he will pay tribute to the great crossover artist Luciano Pavarotti and famed pianist Victor Borge, and the celebration will serve as Cilia Faro’s United States concert debut.
Cilia Faro, who was born in Sicily, Italy, is coming to the U.S. thanks to his new album, From Now On, which features his unique interpretation of the Italian pop and operatic styles.
“I was on break for 10 years because I was recovering from cancer,” Cilia Faro said in a recent phone interview. “I wrote a lot in my notebook, and in this notebook, I wrote all my thoughts as a musician. And these thoughts started to become songs.”
Eventually Cilia Faro shared these songs with his business partner and producer, Matteo Cifelli, who has worked with Il Divo, Tom Jones and Robert Plant. He sat down at a piano and started to play a new song for Cifelli, and the producer immediately saw the potential of the material.
“He said, ‘You should start to produce your new album since you’ve not done anything for 10 years,'” Cilia Faro remembered. “And I was scared because as you know the music industry is very hard at this moment.
But the encouragement kept coming — from Cilia Faro’s manager, from his booking agent. So he set out to make a powerful album, one featuring songs that could inspire young people and help them through different struggles, much like his own ordeal with battling cancer.
It wasn’t an easy recording project.
“Because my producer lives in London and is a full-time sound engineer … it took [many] years to be produced because I’m a full-time musician myself, so I have lots of gigs around the world,” he said. “So basically to start and finish one song usually took two months.”
One of the holdups was finding the right musicians in the United Kingdom and United States. Many of them are touring and don’t have the time to align schedules, but somehow Cilia Faro got it done.
“We are never happy right away about our job,” he said with a laugh. “We want to be perfect, and so we went over and over. But it took in total six years since we started to choose the songs and produce the songs.”
The final product features such songs as “Il Coure Naviga,” “Passione,” “I Love How You Love Me” and “Giramondo.” He sings in both English and Italian, utilizing the full weight of an orchestra to accompany his romantic, powerful voice.
From Now On is a project that honors Cilia Faro’s lifelong dedication to music.
“Music started to touch my life at 9 years old,” he said. “I started with Luciano Pavarotti. I listened [to him] on records, the old records on vinyl. It was fascinating for me how a piece of plastic can generate that kind of music. … Oh my God, I want to do this in life because it brings me peace. It brings me relaxation. I think this is a good thing to do, and it never left me.”
Cilia Faro’s concert debut in New York City will serve as a tribute to Pavarotti and Borge. He wanted to honor Pavarotti in particular because the opera star was able to build a #1 crossover career, and that’s how Cilia Faro defines his career, as a crossover artist.
“He was the first opera singer to start to sing popular music, and he inspired me to become who I am today,” Cilia Faro said. “There’s lots of artists in the world, and I respect all my colleagues. When we pay a tribute to one artist, we don’t do it just to show off; we do it because we respect, and we want to bring back to the people the emotion of that artist. In the same concert, I do a Victor Borge tribute because also Luciano Pavarotti and Victor Borge they have one thing in common, the sense of humor. They used classical music not as boring music for old people, but they used music to reach everyone.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Jonathan Cilia Faro’s new album is called From Now On. He will perform Monday, Oct. 14 at the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of the State of New York in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
