Nicola Conte & Gianluca Petrella : People Need People

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.