Daniele Silvestri’s signature style combines the research for a new songwriting with a feedback from the wider public, mixing talent with experimentation, expressive lightness and social commitment, as in songs like Cohiba, Il mio nemico and La mia casa along with Le cose che abbiamo in comune, Salirò and Quali alibi.
Born in Rome on August 18, 1968, Daniele artistically grew in a Duran Duran-inspired cover band (after renouncing to a moto-scooter in exchange for a keyboard) and until he was 20 years old he traveled in Europe on an Interrail trip. In 1994, he published his debut album, entitled simply “Daniele Silvestri”. He won the Tenco Award as best debut of the year, took part in “Sanremo giovani” with the song “Voglia di gridare” and the following year he was again on the Ariston stage with “L’uomo col megafono”: Daniele sang sitting on a stool, showing some colored placards with the most meaningful sentences from the song and, as often happens in Sanremo, the last rank in the festival chart is synonym with sales and critic success, and the song won the Volare Award as best literary lyric.
Daniele left an indelible mark on that stage and in all his successive shows at the Festival: shaking the reassuring atmosphere of the Ariston theater, Silvestri stroke with his lyrics (in 1999 with “Aria” he sung of a prison lifer), his inspiration (in 2002“Salirò”, about the archetype of hitting rock bottom and then go back to the top, the show is history thanks to Fabio Ferri’s ballet too), his irony (in 2007 “La Paranza” carried, in an apparently lighthearted lyric, references to the chronicle of the time, from Provenzano’s arrest to the Cogne murder), his social commitment (in 2013 “A bocca chiusa” told of rallies and rights and brought sign language on stage), with the strong emotional impact he can communicate (in 2019 “Argentovivo”, written for drums and orchestra, through an almost cinematographic structure – within claustrophobic progressions and sudden harmonious changes – gave voice to a teenager, exploring his deepest and unfathomed desperation. An effective and harsh lyric which left the audience breathless).
Over the years, the many awards he received (Tenco, Lunezia, Ciampi, Mariposa, Mia Martini critics’, Italian Music Awards, David di Donatello Recanati, Amnesty Italia, Grinzane-Cavour, and Carosone awards just to name a few) were an additional proof of his attention to ‘the other’, of his gaze, word and action always sympathetic, alert, generous and vigilant on the present. This is how his many and different projects with and for non-profit organizations originated: Movimondo in Mozambico, Agende Rosse, CUAMM, Every Child is my Child among others.
Since the beginning of his career, the intense live-shows activity took him to the most important stages all over Italy (Primo Maggio, Premio Recanati, Festivalbar, Rock in Roma, Arezzo Wave, …) and, in his tour, he experimented different style solutions (with orchestra, band, guitar and double bass, …), while abroad he met new musical worlds. But often his live shows were also a means to give his own contribution to the causes he believes in, like the music gathering against land mines (in Rome, November ’96) where he sang “La bomba”; the concert in Milan for Adriano Sofri, Ovidio Bompressi and Giorgio Pietrostefani; the concert in Havana (Cuba) for the Festival of the Young Communist Union (July 31, 1996); the concert in Crackow for the departure of the “Memory Train” – a trip with students to the places of the Nazi genocide; the concert in Praca da Independencia in Maputo, Mozambique (November 2003) where, invited by the non-profit organization Movimondo, he played for thousands of Mozambicans and where he went again in the following year (October 2004) with Max Gazzè.
In his 25-years-long career, he had many artistic collaborations for lyrics, duets and compositions (Fiorella Mannoia, Tiromancino, Subsonica, Têtes de Bois, Rocco Papaleo, Frankie Hi-Nrg, Afterhours, Niccolò Fabi, Pino Marino, Diego Mancino, Peppe Servillo, Andrea Camilleri, Bunna, Solis String Quartet, Stefano Bollani con Caparezza, Diodato and Diego Mancino, Wrong on You, …) and in 2014, from his strong artistic and personal bond with Niccolò Fabi and Max Gazzè, “Il Padrone della Festa” was born, a studio album and an important tour in indoor sports arenas which became part of the history of Italian music. The project started with the single “Life is sweet”, which also gave the title to the documentary on CUAMM made by the shootings from the trip that the three artists took together in 2013 in South Sudan. The tour, fully documented in a cd + dvd box, entitled “Il padrone della festa live”, culminated in a sold-out show in the Arena of Verona on May 22, 2015, with a last summer show on July 30 at the “Rock in Roma” Festival which closed at best this extraordinary adventure.
With his ever-active creativity, first theater (with performances and musicals) and then cinema (with title tracks and soundtracks) offered Daniele new forms of expression for his multi-faceted talent which he showed as an author, actor, singer and composer (“Mi persi” and “La paranza” became part of the film “Notturno bus” soundtrack, both winning the 2007 David di Donatello award as best original song).
Ever ready to privilege a direct communication with his public, during his sold-out European tour, in 2009, he opened his blog www.danielesilvestri.it in which his shows were broadcast in live streaming, and in 2016 his web site new release made the site a virtual place for in-depth integration of the artist’s social networks, a sort of daily special focus collecting news, friends’ and artists’ opinions and thoughts.
2017 was the year of great live events: in July, with Carmen Consoli and Max Gazzè, he performed at the Festival di Collisioni in two live shows which gathered over 20.000 people and those were such big hits that the event was repeated in Rome in three sold-out shows at the end of December. On October 21, 2017, Daniele Silvestri performed for the first time at the Milan Mediolanum Forum with an event-concert with Manuel Agnelli, Samuele Bersani, Carmen Consoli, Max Gazzè, Niccolò Fabi and Diodato, all his guests in the over-3-hour-long live music show “Le cose in comune” enthusiasming over 9,000 people.
His lyrics are often language acrobatics stemmed from his vivid composing genious and recorded in the studio albums: Daniele Silvestri (1994), Prima di essere un uomo (1995), Il dado (1996), Sig. Dapatas (1999), Unò-dué (2002), Il latitante (2007), S.C.O.T.C.H. (2011) and Acrobati (2016).
On May 3, 2019, his ninth studio album “La terra sotto i piedi” (Sony), was released, anticipated by a stunning performance in Sanremo which earned him the Mia Martini Critics’ Award (the third of his career, an absolute record shared only with Mia Martini and Patti Pravo), the Sala Stampa Radio-Tv-Web Lucio Dalla and the Sergio Bardotti Best Lyric awards, with “Argentovivo”, a song for drums and orchestra, brought to the Ariston stage with the rapper Rancore and the drummer Fabio Rondanini.
But Daniele, revolutionizing once again the regular publishing procedures, before releasing his album, announced the release of three “themed” 7-inch records: the “Dance Pack”, “Rap Pack” and “Love Pack”, each including six of the new tracks from “La terra sotto i piedi”.
After some summer live shows in the most important Italian festivals, in autumn 2019 his first tour in indoor sports arenas will take place, presented to his audience by a long post on his social pages (“It took me 50 years of age and 25 of career to find not so much the courage, but the will to decide to have a tour in indoor arenas. I always loved more intimate spaces, the magic of theaters… and I’ll keep on loving them. But I also always wanted to challenge myself in different ways, and, as it seems, my new songs are leading me that way”). The new record project, rich of sounds for “great spaces”, will start with a double live event on October 25 and 26.
