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March 2011
AltaVia formed in 2008 in a small town in northern Italy, when after leaving his former band, Andrea Stagni (keyboards and vocals) started searching for new musicians. Davide, local musician and friend, introduced him to Marcello Bellina (drums, vocals), Mauro Monti (guitars, vocals) and Giuliano Vandelli (bass), who accidentally were looking for a keyboard player for a new project. That just seemed to be a perfect match for everyone. After the first rehearsals sessions, they realized that even though they all came from different musical backgrounds, they were all eager to head in the same new direction. Backing vocalist Betty Copeta joined the band after a few months. Everyone's peculiar expertise was brought to the table, making AltaVia's sound a curious mixture of classic rock, old-style prog and pop. Two years later they had already managed to write 10 songs that they decided were worth putting on a record. Debut album “Girt Dog” was recorded entirely in Andrea Stagni’s homestudio.
At long last the début album is ready to go, it's a very proud moment for us all. I am so pleased that at last you will all get to hear just how special Andrea is, both as a musician (vocals and keyboards) and as a composer, the later is what sets him apart from most. Andrea has surrounded himself with like minded musicians and the end result is a full band sound that will evoke memories of the heady days of early progressive rock mixed with cutting edge 2011 production. There are real songs here not just pieces of music and lyrics stuck together to give the impression of being progressive. Finally, thanks to both Rob Reed (Magenta) for coming on board and providing his expertise and the platform 'WhiteKnight Records' for AltaVia's release and to Andrea for staying so loyal and patient through this long road. Now we can just let the music do the talking. Will Caerllysi Music
Update December 2010
WhiteKnight proudly announce the CD is being pressed now at Sony in Austria and mp3s of the album will follow shortly lt will be released early 2011 actual date to follow shortly along with a pre order details WHAT A WAY TO START THE NEW YEAR! Will - Caerllysi Music
Update August 2010
ALTA VIA – GIRT DOG COMING THIS AUTUMN THE PERFECT XMAS PRESENT!
The big news is that we decided to change the name of our band. This was due to the tragic shootings who took place around Ennerdale Bridge; we asked ourselves if it was worth to keep our beloved name, risking someone could think that we wanted to have publicity out of such horrible facts. In the end, we decided to adopt another name: AltaVia that refers to beautiful places in high Dolomites. There is a brand new myspace: http://www.myspace.com/altaviamusic and an AltaVia page on facebook… we invite you to check it out: you’ll find some pictures of the recordings, and soon we hope also some fun footage! The most important thing is that we are all very happy with the musical result of the cd. All recording and mixing were made at my homerecording studio, so what you hear is what you get… and it’s definitely us. For the final step, mastering, I choose to use the absolute expertise of Davide Barbarulo and his mastering lab. He made a great job, in my opinion. I just want to say that I want to thank Will, Rob, and all of our friends for the constant support and help they gave us, and for their friendship. It’s a pleasure now taking care of the artwork part while wondering about the day our (hard) work will be released. Thank you everyone for reading. Andrea - AltaVia
Update September 2009
Hello everyone,
I am very happy to say that me, Mauro, Marcello and Giulio are refining the last songs we wrote this summer and we'll be ready to start recordings by October. This schedule is due to a couple of things: first of all I think these last three songs are the best we wrote so far, the main themes are done but we need to give them the final cut, secondarily because Mercury is going to turn retrograde until the end of September, and I'm told that it's no good to start new things when Mercury is retrograde...
Anyway it will be a very challenging autumn/winter time for us, our primary concern is now to choose the best solutions for the CD, for we are very happy with the writing and it's important for us to fit them with the best sounds and arrangements we can.
Since we started playing together last year we had a fantastic time composing, and now packing this experience properly into a CD means a lot for us. It's time to get things concrete, me and my band mates will lock ourselves into my small recording studio until the work is done, and I can assure that everyone will give 110% , because what I can say about Ennerdale is that full enthusiasm is really leading this adventure. Even if sometimes it's difficult, because making a record means to write down in tracks your feelings, and you have to be sensitive when you're recording, even if you're doing it after a hard working day.
It's a pleasure for me to have the opportunity to share all this with you, thank you for reading and thank you very much to Caerllysi. I'll give updates during the recording process.
Yours, Andrea - Ennerdale
Update April 2009
Hi there again,
This is a little update on what Ennerdale have done in these past few months and what we are doing now.
First of all I have to say that we wrote seven songs, most of them have already been pre-produced, and we plan to have a recording session next week to record the demos of the missing ones. These sessions are very useful because they allow us to understand which parts works and what has to be reworked.
Then I think we'll go through some other ideas and drafts we are still working on, and finally we'll decide what material should be selected for the album. I have absolutely no idea about how much time this process will take, for our jobs and families leave only a little time for music, but I feel confident because everyone of us is very happy with the material we are writing, so despite of the lack of time we are filling the whole thing with a huge amount of enthusiasm. In the meantime I am technically updating my little studio with the aim to give the record the best available quality. We'll record everything here, and this will be a really great challenge for us, but this choice will preserve what Ennerdale really is. So far I can say that in the CD there will be different kind of atmospheres, from long and complex composition to delicate ballads, but being talks about music quite useless, I prefer to invite you to visit our myspace site www.myspace.com/ennerdalemusic where we uploaded some bits of our pre-productions just to give an idea about our material.
Andrea - Ennerdale
Download full track Mp3s
Caerllysi Music is proud to introduce you to the exceptional talents of Andrea Stagni a young musician from Italy who’s song writing, vocals and musicianship skills make him the typical modern progressive rock music. Andrea is also a very nice human being and we were so pleased when on his visit to the UK this summer he was able to visit us here at Groesfaen house.
We were already familiar with his amazing unpublished works with Zabowks. whilst with us he played treated us to some demo tracks of his new band Ennerdale, which we were really excited about and agreed that we would be honoured to help develop the profile of his music Andrea kindly agreed that he would select three tracks from his Zabowks back catalogue and allow them to be played on Caerllysi Music to advertise his style of music prior to the cd release of Ennerdales debut cd. so folks you can now download free of charge three complete tracks which I hope you will agree show what a very special talent Andrea is. His vocals are as good as any of the great traditional progressive rock vocalists. lots more will appear here in due course including some photos of his visit, below are words from the Italian master himself about his music and his hopes. Stay lucky
Will Andrea Stagni writes:
I've been playing several years with an Italian band called Zabov, we spent quite a lot of time playing together in the studio making demos, but I guess we took the thing too much as an hobby, and we’ve never pushed things to get distribution contracts or something like that. We had the chance to make a couple of “serious” recordings. The first, in 1995 ended out to be too naïve to be purposed, and the second one has been on the run for seven years, between 2000 and 2007. At the end of that last recording I thought that the work was not that bad and it would have deserved to be published. I only felt sceptical about the mix that a local sound engineer made for us in a typical metal prog style... I found a label, and after listening to some rough mix they were ready to sign us, but when their sales director told us we had to get back into the “real” mix to make it sound more like the rough mixes, the other guys slammed the door to him. I was a little bit disappointed by this. I left the band and entirely remixed the CD. Then I went back in the 1995's recordings, and re-edited/remixed them as well, I printed a few double cd copies and gave it to my friends as a gift. End of game, for me. Life is unpredictable, you know. One of these copies was given to a certain Will from Caerllysi music. He liked it and kindly called me asking if it was possible to publish some of that material. At the time I was starting another band. Or, better, I was joining three lads who used to play together prog covers with the precise idea to let them turn into an original band. The telephone call with the drummer went like: “Hi, I am Andrea, do you remember me? I am looking for musicians to start a new band, would you like to play drums?” and he said: “we are a band looking for a keyboard player, would you like to join us?”. I met them, and we had a 5 minutes speech, I stated that I wanted to write original music, create cds and hopefully see them published instead of playing covers. They all agreed, it seemed to me that they ware waining to such a chance, and we started writing our first song. The name of the band is Ennerdale and the line up is: Marcello Bellina on drums, Mauro Monti on guitars, me on keyboards and some giutars, Giuliano Vandelli on bass. Who sings? Both Mauro and Marcello are good singers, sometimes I sing myself. Me and Caerllysi music kept in touch, and when I went to London last July for a holiday, I decided to drive all the way to Wales to meet Will. I had some demos to purpose him. Me, my girlfriend Benedetta and our friend Olga were warmly welcome at Groesfaen House by Jane and Will. It's a wonderful place. We chatted a lot about music, and then Will listened carefully to the demos I brought. He also said he liked it! I really look forward to work with him, for he is first of all a music fan. He puts this at the top on his label activity. He deeply knows and loves what he is selling or promoting. I guess this is quite rare in music business. At the end of the day, he also gifted me with a copy of Hoggwash's CD... which was for him an opportunity loss, because I was about to buy a copy... (shhht! don't tell him!). I had listened to some promotional bits on the internet, I thought that was a great debut album, and now I can reinforce this statement: beautiful songs. Now I am working with the guys on this project, we are pre-producing in my home studio. The difficulty is (as always) time as a scarce resource. None of us is a professional musician, so we all have to face the fact we are working all days and artistic activities take place by night, or during weekends. For some of us who have wives and children is even harder than for me. Anyway there's a lot of enthusiasm about this project, and I deeply feel it in my bandmates. This make things incredibly easier. And I am very happy with the outcome. It's hard to tell about the style of the new songs. I have to say that every new song comes a little bit as a surprise, probably because we are still exploring ourselves musically. Let's say that it seems to be a mixture between my symphonic taste, Mauro's funky/blues way of playing, flavoured by Marcello's fanciful drumming (yes, a little bit genesis influenced) all supported by Giuliano's nearly fusion basslines. Quite a bit of a meltin' pot, I'd say. This helps me looking forward to the future without complaining about all time and work spent in vain on the old material. Anyway, I am now re-singing two or three songs of that old stuff, for Will asked me to do it. At the time of the second recording we had a singer who did a good work no doubt, but he found melodies written by me, so the result could have been more natural. I think that every singer needs to get into a melody like in a dress. Sometimes you have to tailor here and there to feel perfectly fit in. Ok, now I am going to back to the studio, because new vocals and Ennerdale's work are waiting for me. Take care!!! Andrea
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