Federico Albanese is a composer born in Milan, Italy in 1982. His musical versatility is a natural gift that pushes him to explore music in all its facets. Albanese’s compositions are airy and cinematic, blending classical music, pop and psychedelia. He will perform in Akbank Sanat within the scope of XJAZZ Festival.
He started studying piano and clarinet as a child before becoming fascinated by rock music performing in several bands. Influenced by black music, folk, electronic, modern and contemporary classical music his skills as a composer soon emerged, He worked for 5 years as prop man in several film sets. This experience made him understand the power of the connection between music and images and helped him to develop his personal musical path.
In 2007 he met singer and songwriter Jessica Einaudi and together they founded the avant-garde duo “La Blanche Alchimie”.
Composing songs with Jessica he rediscovered his love for the piano, which from that moment on, became his main instrument. They released 2 albums and gained national and international critical attention, performing around Europe, Russia and USA. Their sound has been described as melancholic and haunting, intermingling mellow acoustics and rock-infused dreamscapes.
The first omonymous album was released in Italy in 2009 on Ponderosa/Edel. The second album “Galactic Boredom” was released in Italy in 2011 on Ponderosa/Universal and in Germany in 2012 on Q-rious/Edel.
In September 2012, the band has been nominated by “Preis der deutschenShallplattenkritik” in the category of best independent album.
In 2010 he scored the soundtrack of the short film “Pick up” by Manyhands - a collective of young italian directors - broadcasted by one the most important Italian television channels (SKY).
In 2012, he scored the soundtrack of documentary “Fabulae Romane” filmed by Matteo Cherubino, a work that documents the first of a structured set of activities of Zegnart - a project commissioned by Ermenegildo Zegna dedicated to the art of our time - that took place at MaXXI - National Museum of XXI Century Arts in Rome. In 2012 he composed the music of full length film “Shadows in the distance” by spanish director Orlando Bosh which has been premiered at Shanghai Film Festival.
Over the years Federico composed or licensed music for several films and projects, including debut short film by Bahar Ebrahim “Alles im grünen Bereich”, the documentary “Cinema Perverso” by Oliver Shweem produced by the german TV channel ARTE, the BBC TV Series "Our Girl".
Released in February 2014, his highly acclaimed debut solo album “The Houseboat and the Moon” has been described as pure gold , and one of the most beautiful modern classical albums of the past years... . He also produced and arranged J Moon (aka Jessica Eianudi) first solo album “Melt”. In August 2014 he released a “Reworked” version of “The Houseboat and the Moon” featuring remixes of Cassegrain, John Lemke, Franz Kirmann and Saffronkeira.
Albanese’s second full length album entitled “The Blue Hour” saw the light of the day on January 15, 2016 and it has been released by the historical record label Berlin Classics in their new series of contemporary classical music called “Neue Meister”.
The Blue Hour has been described as One of the most hauntingly beautiful record you’ll ever hear (Drowned in Sound) or A magical record (Clash).
In February 2016, Albanese composed and arranged the piece “Shadowland Suite”, an orchestrated version of the tracks Shadow Land pt.1 and 2. He performed the piece in Berlin together with the Deutches Kammerorchester Berlin. Following the release of “The Blue Hour”, Albanese performed numerous concert across Europe including Womad Festival (UK), Montreux Jazz Festival (CH) and SXSW in Austin, Texas.
Albanese’s third full-lenght album "By The Deep Sea" will be released via Neue Meister on February 23rd, 2018. About his new record Albanese quotes: “By The Deep Sea is a state of mind in which I find myself quite often. It’s a sort of meditation state, when I try to detach myself from the daily life. In this inner world there is space to get closer to our deepest thoughts, ideas, doubts, close enough to see them clearly, from the right distance, and being able to process them, exorcise them, translate them into something else.” The album features 12 original tracks composed, produced and arranged by Albanese and mixed in August 2017 by Francesco Donadello at Vox-Ton Studio in Berlin.