Jack Saveretti Leads Us Touching A Conducted Tour Within His New Musical Genre, Europeana.
"I'm a Mediterranean kid at heart," said singer-songwriter Jack Saveretti. "That's where I feel happiest." But because he had been stuck inside for the past year, he didn't have much chance to indulge in that passion. So he started dreaming.
"Looking out the window is not enough anymore. So I ought to create this kind of escape - vacation, escape, in my head." As he returns to childhood memories of sun-drenched beaches and swimming along Italian shores, he begins to imagine the soundtrack - full of the voices of Demis Roussos, Julio Iglesias, Gipsy Kings, Jacques Brel, and Italian discos.
They are all artists who say Britain is missing something with its strange aversion to foreign-language music. “All lovers' song by Jacques Brel - La Chanson Des Vieux Amant - is for me the greatest love song of all time. It is inviolable," he said. "And I spent many nights after drinking too much wine, translating it verbatim for my friends.
"I was so bored of doing it that I decided to write my versions of these French, Spanish, German, and Italian songs and do it in English." The result was Europeana, the star's seventh album, and the continuation of her first UK number one album, Singing To Strangers. He boldly claims that Europeana is a whole new genre that draws on Switzerland, Italy, Great Britain, and America to create something unique.
"This is music from my childhood, revised for today," he explained. The album was made with the band last summer at his home in Oxfordshire with the windows wide open. "The sun and joy permeated the songs," he recalled.
The sound palette will be known to anyone who has ever toured or seen Eurovision - albeit with a little more class. But whatever you arrange, don't expect Savoretti to make a name for himself in the ring for next year's song contest. "No, because Eurovision doesn't represent what music is going on in Europe," he said. "He presented on television what was happening in Europe.
"It emphasizes how every country does show business - but not music." To address this, we set out to explore the album's new tracks and explore the influences and experiences that shaped Europeana.