Joe Barbieri is a fascinating anomaly. An outsider that outside the track of the industry has been able to build a personal journey, and that has succeeded in the rare exercise in conveying the approval of critics, colleagues and the public.
After an apprenticeship in the team of the Italian singer/songwriter Pino Daniele (who was his first producer), the one that the French magazine Les Inrockuptibles rightly dubbed as "l'artiste qui murmure à nos oreilles" in 2004 released his first album titled "In Parole Povere". The debut is an irresistible meltin 'pot that binds the world music to jazz, to the noblest tradition of the Italian ‘cantautori’. The album is released in twelve countries and is elected ‘album of the year’ by the German review CD-Kritik.
2009 is the year of "Maison Maravilha". Barbieri's second album is distributed over Japan, North America and much of Europe and soon reaches the 20,000 copies sold. "Maison Maravilha" is a trove of great songs; among the others maybe two emerge: "Normalmente" which the Italian pianist Stefano Bollani has publically defined as the most beautiful ballad ever written, and "Malegría" a haunting fado in which Barbieri duets with the cuban star of Buena Vista Social Club, Omara Portuondo.
The concerts that follow are numerous and crowded, and in 2010, "Maison Maravilha" becomes a live cd+dvd titled "Maison Maravilha Viva" recorded at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome.
On the day of the vernal equinox last year Joe Barbieri is back with "Respiro”.
Beside him there are friends as the Uruguayan Oscar-winning Jorge Drexler, Gianmaria Testa, the trumpeter Fabrizio Bosso and the aforementioned Stefano Bollani. During the summer of the same year, through the historic French company Le Chant du Monde / Harmonia Mundi, "Respiro" is progressively released in more than fifty countries, and Barbieri is invited to play as in Italy as in Tokyo, Copenhagen, Madrid or Paris.
On the 13th of may of this year Joe Barbieri invited the jazz players Luca Aquino and Antonio Fresa to remember the figure of Chet Baker in the 25th anniversary of his death, reinterpreting his most beautiful repertoire and also investigating Chet’s connections with Italy.
The album – with the featurings of, among others, the American singer Stacey Kent and the Brasilian singer-songwriter Marcio Faraco – is titled “Chet Lives!”.
