Peter Cincotti on Mike Ragogna's 2.0 - Radio KRUU

Admin · 1 Peter Cincotti on Mike Ragogna's 2.0 - Radio KRUU Gio Set 23, 2010 7:30 pm

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Data d'iscrizione : 22.01.10
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Hello Everybody!!!!!!!

I want to let you all know about the participation of Peter to an American radio KRUU On Wednesday 22 September 2010 he has been interviewed; the program will be re-aried On Friday 24 September 2010 at 3pm (15.00) in Italy - (8am CST - USA)

Here the entry blog radio: [Devi essere iscritto e connesso per vedere questo link]

Peter Cincotti on Mike Ragogna's 2.0 - Radio KRUU Images-15_1

Peter Cincotti on Mike Ragogna's 2.0 - Radio KRUU Images-15_1

by James Moore
Huffington Post entertainment contributor and KRUU radio personality Mike Ragogna spends an hour talking with singer/songwriter & pianist Peter Cincotti.

Cincotti's self-titled debut album is a compilation of traditional jazz songs, while his second album, On the Moon, features some of the artist's own songs. His latest work, released in 2009, East of Angel Town, features all original works by the artist.

This new work began when Cincotti teamed up with producer David Foster, who signed him to a new contract on his Reprise/Warner Bros., producer Humberto Gatica, and producer/sound designer Jochem van der Saag.

Admin · 2 Re: Peter Cincotti on Mike Ragogna's 2.0 - Radio KRUU Mer Set 29, 2010 5:05 pm

Admin

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Data d'iscrizione : 22.01.10
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Peter's Interview @ KRUU Radio with Mike Ragogna's 2.0 Peter Cincotti on Mike Ragogna's 2.0 - Radio KRUU 92253

NOW AVAILABLE (download) - ENJOY IT!!!! cheers

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Admin · 3 A Conversation with Peter Cincotti Gio Gen 05, 2012 3:34 pm

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Messaggi : 503
Data d'iscrizione : 22.01.10
Località : Italy

A Conversation with Peter Cincotti

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Mike Ragogna: I personally believe your album East Of Angel Town is one of the best albums of '09, and I really wanted the opportunity to talk to you about that and about yourself. You're a New Yorker, right?

Peter Cincotti: Yeah, born and raised in Manhattan.

MR: And when you were growing up there, you played in a lot of clubs.

PC: I did, I think I started sometime in junior high school. I started playing, basically, wherever there was a piano--whether it was a restaurant, bar or clubs. I met a lot of musicians that way, and I think that's how one thing led to another. It was a good education for me.

MR: And that led to you, in '00 or so, playing at the Montreal Jazz Festival?

PC: Yeah, I think I was about seventeen the first time I went over there. I entered a piano competition, it happened at the very last minute. I just got my tape in on time, I ended up getting accepted, and I participated in the competition there. Then, I went back the following two years for a different event, so I played in a small club the following year, and a slightly bigger hall the next year. I've been pretty much going back ever since. But yeah, that first time was part of the piano competition.

MR: I read somewhere that you won with your performance of "Night In Tunisia"?

PC: Actually, I think that's wrong. Somewhere along the way, the press, I think, got that wrong. There was another song I got an award for, but I didn't win--I didn't win the competition. There were a lot of great players there, and I got like third prize or something like that. But it didn't matter to me because I was very excited to even be a part of it.

MR: How did you get discovered? You hooked up with Phil Ramone at some point, right?

PC: Yeah, I was playing in a club here in Manhattan and Phil came to see my show, and I made my first record shortly after that. I met Phil, and then we pretty much went into the studio and made my first CD.

MR: Yeah, a collection that, basically, was a lot of standards.

PC: Very different from the record you're familiar with, East Of Angel Town. My first two records were basically jazz records that involved me playing a lot of piano, and basically covering old standards. I wrote some music at that time--I've been writing for a while--but it was in the style of the albums I was making then. Then, for my second record I began writing more and more, and then out came East Of Angel Town, which is kind of extremely different from anything I had done prior.

MR: The funny thing about those first two records, good or bad, is that they happened during a time when people like Michael Bublé and Josh Groban were being established.

PC: That's right, yeah.

MR: So, you were put into that mix, and I guess it's very hard to poke your head out afterwards.

PC: There's always a mix, somehow. No matter what, there always seems to be a group of comparisons that shift through the years. I'm experiencing it now. Even after East Of Angel Town, there's a new set of people, and I can't even keep track of them all.

MR: Well, I'm going to be guilty of that too because I'm going to compare you to Billy Joel.

PC: That's okay. (laughs) I don't mind comparisons. I guess it's natural.

MR: I bring up Billy Joel because he was one of my favorite artists from the '70s. Right up to An Innocent Man, I loved every record.

PC: I'm a big fan as well, so I take that as a big compliment.

MR: When I first heard your song "Lay Your Body Down (Goodbye Philadelphia)," I thought it must be one of the most unique approaches to independence, either personal or bigger picture, that I've ever heard any artist do.

PC: Yeah, I'm glad you obviously read it that way because what's interesting with that song is that, basically, since it was created, I've been on the other end of hearing all kinds of interpretations of it; and it's one of those songs that, when it was being written, it was more important to ask questions than to necessarily answer them. If you're familiar with the rest of the record, a lot of it is pretty direct in either its story telling or lyrical content, but "Goodbye Philadelphia," for some reason, was always meant to straddle the fence. I haven't said much, other than listening to people's reactions to it, which has been all over the map, you know?

MR: I want to hear about your connection with Spider-Man, sir.

PC: Spider-Man...there's not much to say. I got asked to be in one of the scenes in Spider-Man 2. It was nothing--I mean it was fun to be a part of--but it's for about a second and a half or two seconds. If you blink, you'll miss it.

MR: Yeah, but I imagine those were two of the best seconds of your life.

PC: Exactly. (laughs)

MR: You were also a part of--this is a more complicated can of worms I'm opening here--you were part of Daniel Radcliffe's December Boys and you wrote the theme to that?

PC: Well, yeah, I was given the script to that movie and was asked to write a song for the movie. That was really the only song off of East Of Angel Town that was written for another purpose, and I loved doing it. I loved kind of writing for something else, rather than myself. After it was written, it just seemed to fit into the record, so we left it on.

MR: Yeah, I'm really glad you left it on the record because that was my favorite song until "Goodbye Philadelphia" became an obsession.

PC: Oh, funny.

MR: Would you tell the story behind what could be considered the album's most controversial song, "Be Careful"?

PC: That went through a series of versions, I think lyrically in the beginning. I went out with some girl that I had never met before, and it was right in the middle of me writing that song. I guess it was close to a blind date kind of thing, but she was really doing all the things that, traditionally speaking, would be the male's role on a date. She would open the door, pay for the check, and she really went pretty far, you know, as far as, "I'm going to walk you home." She really took charge, and I remember it was in the middle of me trying to discover what the song was going to be about, and that experience kind of helped me figure it out. There was something to be said about that one way or another, so that's kind of how "Be Careful" took its shape. In a way, it's like "Goodbye Philadelphia" in a more fired-up way. I've seen a wide variety of reactions to that song.

MR: Earlier I mentioned that I was a fan of Billy Joel's music, and recently, I found a picture with you and Alexa Ray Joel.

PC: Oh, we did a show together about a year ago, here in New York. Maybe it was from that?

MR: Yeah, maybe. Since Billy is the one I've been comparing you to, and since even Alexa in the mix, I guess the question would be does the Piano Man know you're out there nipping at his heels?

PC: (laughs) I don't know what he knows. I've met him once or twice, very briefly, and then I did that show with Alexa. So, other than that, I cannot speak for him.

MR: Let's talk about your title track, "Angel Town." Who is this Mazy anyway?

PC: I have no idea. She's everyone and no one. "Angel Town" was, I guess, written somewhere along the way. I made the record half the time in New York and the other half in L.A., so somewhere along the way, when I was in Los Angeles, "Angel Town" came out, and it ended up becoming the title track. If you spend any time in Los Angeles, it's clear to see where that song came from.

MR: Yeah, but when I first heard that song, I knew a New Yorker wrote it. Had to be.

PC: (laughs) How funny.

MR: The funny thing about "Angel Town" is that every character type is pretty true. You pretty much see all of them if you frequent the club scene for a while. The wild thing about that song is you have this sinister underbelly going on musically which really paints the picture of your particular storyline even better than you could describe it lyrically.

PC: I guess that was the goal.

MR: For production, you're together with David Foster on this project, right?

PC: Yes, he produced it along with a guy named Jochem van der Saag and Humberto Gatica, which is basically David's team.

MR: What were the dynamics like?

PC: It was a great experience. David was really the guy that I signed on with, as far as him hearing the songs and saying, "Hey, I want to produce this record." I was meeting with a lot of different producers at the time, and given the world that I was coming from musically, there was a departure of some sort to be made. I met with a lot of different people when I was trying to look for that right guy, and then David heard a lot of these songs at some private event that I did in Los Angeles that he was at. And then, since he heard these songs, he kind of became an advocate of mine and we started talking with each other. We said, "Why don't we do three songs together and see how it goes?" We ended up doing like eleven songs in three days, and it just happened very quickly. A lot of the recording happened very quickly with him. Then, we did a lot of post-production after that, which took some time. The basic tracks happened quickly. I mean, I had been playing a lot of that material for a while on the road, just really kind of wearing it in, So, by the time we hit the studio, most of the arrangements were in shape as far as the bare bones of it. What took time was the post-production, a lot of the sonic elements of it, and the layers of guitars and other instruments that were outside of my band at the time.

MR: Can you remember what those first three songs were?

PC: It's funny, I can't even remember. I think "Goodbye Philadelphia" might have been one of the three because we did a demo of it once in his studio on a keyboard very quickly, and that actually ended up being the track that is now on the record. Some of the demo things that I had played when introducing him to some of this music really ended up on the final record, and I don't know if it's because they were the best takes or because I got demo-itis or whatever you call it when you get attached to the demos. Either way, a good amount of that stuff ended up on the final product.

MR: Did you already have a sort of game plan as far as entering the next phase of your career following Concord Records?

PC: Definitely, but it was more that my game plan was revealed to me than it was me saying, "Okay, here's what I'm going to do now." I was just writing. I wasn't saying, "Okay, I want to write pop songs now, and make a very different kind of record." I wasn't thinking about any of that. I look back in retrospect and see that that happened. But in the moment, I was just writing whatever came out, it ended up being very different, and that was that. It really wasn't pre-calculated.

MR: Another one of my favorite songs one this record is "Cinderella Beautiful." I had taken a trip up to Toronto and played "Cinderella Beautiful" repeatedly, so much that my buddy wanted to rip the CD player out of the car.

PC: (laughs) Funny. I got to that point many times during the record making process.

MR: But it is a beautiful song. Hey, our local superstar Theo Shier has a question for you: "What inspired you to do a cover of the dance song 'Love Is Gone?'"

PC: I won't say it was a task or anything, but it wasn't really of my own volition in the sense that I just came up and said, "Hey, I want to do this." I was doing a promotion in France, and a lot of the French TV shows, one in particular, required that I find a cover to do along with my single, "Goodbye Philadelphia." So, as you can imagine, there were a lot of pretty ordinary suggestions coming down the pike, and I was trying to avoid them. I was listening to what was on the radio in France and heard "Love Is Gone," and that was really when I got the idea. I don't know, I heard something in that song that I knew the French public would like and recognize, and I heard something in the music and the melody that I thought maybe I could do something with. So, I tried to rearrange it and came up with this version that I ended up doing on the show. That's how that whole things started, then I did it on the show with my song, and that was that.

MR: What's interesting is, when you look at this album from the perspective of you having added that song you played in France and "December Boys" from the movie with Daniel Radcliffe, East Of Angel Town came together as a real work in progress for a while.

PC: Yeah, I guess you could say that. "December Boys" was always part of it. What happened with "Love Is Gone" is, I finished the record and it was released in Europe, then over a year went by with it not being released here in America. When it was released in America, they needed a bonus cut, and "Love Is Gone" was the natural choice, but "Love Is Gone" was never really part of my original concept of the record like "December Boys" was. I guess you could say it was a constant evolution.

MR: Well, "The Country Life" really does feel like the end of the record, and that comes before your two bonus tracks.

PC: Exactly, that was definitely the intent there, to have it end with "The Country Life." You know, a bonus cut is a bonus cut, and I just wanted to be sure that the back of the record said, "Bonus Cut- 'Love Is Gone,'" just so I could protect what I thought was the arc of the record.

MR: And the bonus cuts are very clearly additional treats.

PC: Thanks.

MR: So, when's the next album coming?

PC: Well, I'm about to start it. I've been writing, pretty much, since East Of Angel Town, so I have a lot of new material. I'm probably going to get in the studio within the next month or so.

MR: Cool. Will you be with the same team?

PC: I don't know, it's still a little up in the air. I want to kind of follow the songs. I have a lot of material and I want to kind of pick what the record is, which is starting to kind of reveal itself to me, and then follow whatever the songs need, you know? I'll just do whatever is right for the music.

MR: Nice. It seems like you'll be a "Man On A Mission," huh?

PC: (laughs) Nice segue.

MR: Well, thank you very much for your time today, Peter. Much appreciated.

PC: Not at all, thank you Mike.

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Peter Cincotti on Mike Ragogna's 2.0 - Radio KRUU

1 Peter Cincotti on Mike Ragogna's 2.0 - Radio KRUU Gio Set 23, 2010 7:30 pm

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2 Re: Peter Cincotti on Mike Ragogna's 2.0 - Radio KRUU Mer Set 29, 2010 5:05 pm

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3 A Conversation with Peter Cincotti Gio Gen 05, 2012 3:34 pm

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4 Re: Peter Cincotti on Mike Ragogna's 2.0 - Radio KRUU

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