Linda Malgieri

Linda Malgieri
I was seven when I had my first piano lesson. Although I was accustomed to that kind of sound because my elder brother had already been playing the piano for several years, I had desire to try out something else: the drums.

Enchanted with rhythm I wanted to learn how to play it and create rhythmic variations, but my father’s vision differed from mine and I ended up with my brother’s piano teacher. However, you cannot have a fire without a spark, so I stopped going after only two months.
Then at age 11, while still in middle school, I gave it another try and delight I felt while playing with its keys and sounds took me by surprise. A desire for a more competitive and stimulating environment than middle school was burning inside of me, and without realising how precious music was going to become in my life, I decided to enrol at my hometown Conservatory.
In the year three of my Conservatory studies the epiphany finally struck me; during one of my last piano lessons and after giving performance of Arabesque no.1 by Claude Debussy, my piano teacher exclaimed: “Finally! This is really good!”. And this triggered everything. Months and months of hard work had finally paid off and satisfaction I felt in that moment was so immense that I couldn’t help but continue playing – it has become my oxygen that allows me to breathe, to live, still till today.
My studies at the Conservatory proved to be arduous, especially when, at the same time, I was attending the Foreign Languages University; yet my inner fire, powered by music itself, had never stopped burning, even when obstacles seemed insurmountable. In 2015 I graduated under the guidance of M° Michele Sampaolesi, to whom I will always be grateful for having seen my strength even when I was not able to see that myself, and for having introduced me to my current Maestro: Maurizio Baglini.
Our first meeting occurred just a couple of months before my graduation, during a masterclass at my Conservatory, and what astonished me most was his extreme humanity and ability to perceive a good thing worth attention and use it as a starting point of our joint work, even when that “thing” was not easily recognised or evident even to me. This eventually influenced if not made me the teacher I am today. I will always be extremely thankful to him for having believed in me, transformed my hands and given me the tools to reproduce and express the music I have in my mind and in my heart, sparked my interest and supported my curiosity towards unusual or little-known repertoires, that led me to the discovery of this Afro-Cuban pieces in 2019.
As a salsa dancer I got to know Cuban music for the first time. Dancing for me was a type of liberation of my mind, body and soul, but also an escape from the “box” I had created myself and I’d been living in, a way to get to know myself better and test my limits and capabilities, all of that through music, but this time using my entire body, not just my hands.
The search continued, piquing my curiosity. I wanted to know more about the origin of Cuban dance and how it happened to become a so important and distinctive feature of this culture. Thereupon, this enchantingly intricate Cuban repertoire was my new discovery, depicting the soul of people who cannot stop smiling with a conscious yet melancholic smile reflected in major keys but sadder than minor ones, in a music that brings joy and lightness to a heart that has suffered, but never stopped beating and, most importantly, doesn’t want to.
Studying these pieces by Lecuona and Gottschalk taught me to smile while playing, to perceive a light-hearted playfulness within a music score, to experiment with piano keys and sounds, thus reconnect myself to that little Linda who wanted so bad to play the drums and who was fascinated with rhythm, here dominantly present while encompassing every aspect of this music.
In January 2023, after many years of in-depth research and studies, after countless hours of hard work on the keyboard, but mostly after an inevitable journey of self-improvement, as a pianist and as a person, this CD was finally recorded. As a symbol of a continuous struggle to overcome personal challenges in order to fulfil the dream, this unjustly forgotten repertoire represents a kind of music that tells people’s story and, with this album, mine too.