31-Mar-2021 | Nicola Conte & Gianluca Petrella

Brand New Album

Sixteen years after the release of “New Standards” (2001, SCEP336), Italian musicians and jazz revivalists Nicola Conte & Gianluca Petrella are back on Schema Records with a new album, ‘People Need People’. Since the beginning of their collaboration, Conte and Petrella’s goal was to maintain an open concept of sound influenced by a wide-ranging taste in music and their ability to realize collaborative projects with a mindful array of artists. 

For the most part recorded in Puglia, Italy, ‘People Need People’ is the result of a constantly evolving research and artistic exchange, that has been able to cross borders during its development. 

Sonically conceived as a collective creative experience drawing on Conte & Petrella’s early influences from soul, spiritual Afro-jazz, and research on modern electronic sounds, disco and hip-hop, the album’s 11 tracks feature a cosmopolitan ensemble of musicians including MC/poet Raashan Ahmad (USA), pianist & composer Nduduzo Makhathini (South Africa), multi-instrumentalist & composer Magnus Lindgren (Sweden), singer & educator Débo Ray (USA), singer, vocalist & songwriter Bridgette Amofah (Ghana/ England), percussionist Abdissa Assefa (Ethiopia/Finland), drummer & composer Teppo Mäkynen (Finland), vibraphonist Pasquale Mirra (Italy), percussionist & drummer Simone Padovani (Italy), and Italian rising stars such as singer & producer Davide Shorty, pianist & singer Carolina Bubbico, drummer & producer Tommaso Cappellato, pianist Seby Burgio, trumpeter Mirco Rubegni, and saxophonist Pasquale Calò. 

In a time of civil unrest, unprecedented challenges, and social distancing, People Need People is a call for values that are essential to our species, as well as to the world as a whole. It prompts the listener to imagine other ways of living while reminding them to experience joy in the present. In People Need People, Conte & Petrella employ a musical language that layers their cumulative practices and music research experiences, encouraging the audience to elevate through sounds, rhythms, and vibrations, guided by the only truly universal language: Music