Article by Marzia Picciano | Photo by Cesare Veronesi (in Bologna)
It rarely happens that we find ourselves in a truly intimate concert, but when it happens, how do we react? Let's put it briefly: it depends, above all, on the artist. So being in front of Douglas Dare in a very smoky Visconti gym this freezing November 19th for the Milan Music Week 2024 it's good, because you have the rare opportunity to hear an artist as he says, so theatrical, just for you.
For those who don't know, Douglas Samuel Charles Dare, Englishman from Dorset, born in '90 (yes), singer (very good), pianist (equally), boasts in his career the opening of several tours for artists of a certain caliber under the label Erased Tapesincluding Nihls Frahm, and so Ólafur Arnalds and in Italy i Wild Beastsof which he remembers Milan as his very first Italian date. And here the day before yesterday he reveals himself to us in his first solo show, the one with which he brings his third effort to Milan and then to Turin (November 20th), Omni. In the Visconti gym at Bellezza, which was not very crowded, whoever was there this Tuesday evening had absolutely not ended up there by chance.
Why Douglas Darein his vaguely intimidated tenderness, absolutely excited and happy like a child on Christmas day, immediately attracts attention not only for the extreme divine elegance that he carries with him and emanates with sinuous grace once he takes off his coat and melts in front of the grand piano mounted on arabesque carpets. He attracts our sympathy and we let ourselves be overwhelmed by his musicality, in the intense rhythm that characterizes each of his pieces, from the most lyrical (Red Arrowsfor example, followed by an almost a cappella closing of the audience) to the most lively (Painter). There is a very slight ecstasy that emanates from his figure as he bends now on the piano, now on the keyboard, a sort of youthful and youthful flavour, which therefore is not necessarily a concrete fact, a physique, a chronological age linked to a concept of aging. Rather, it is a moment, a sensation, a space-time fracture, a desire to escape. It is no coincidence that three of his pieces ended up in the Prisma series on Amazon Prime and which he discovered was the reason why he is known in Italy. Obviously he did them all, in a crescendo of intensity that imploded The Joy In Sarah's Eyes, where he let himself go in long queues, as much as those of the piano, cathartic enough to cleanse all our sins.
He had to introduce us introduce ourselves Omnian electronic twist that seems to distance him from the purity of the piano that instead characterized Douglas's early works (such as the ode to childhood and the tenderness of Milkteeth) and which instead last night more than ever emerged with incredible force, adding a veil of mystery to the brazen melancholy of a golden past. No, he can't stay at the keyboard and writhe to the beat of the tracks on the PC. He made it in a club, it's a club record, he tells us. But, simply, faced with that enormous elephant in the room, he had to take note of a great banal truth – there is no temptation that stimulates us more than an old love. Douglas tells us that he discovered this grand piano with a heroic history in the Arci Bellezza. And now although his desire for change has led him to backing tracks and synths for his new record, he feels he can't help but sit down and play that piano. He says it: I feel that now that connection is back. Moral of the story: me and a group of lucky fans listen to his entire latest album in piano format. Sorry for those who were hoping to dance, we are in the total dreaminess of Mr. Dare's world. But don't tell Bologna! Why not, they won't have this goodness. Too late.
I already said on another occasion that the piano itself brings a huge challenge: it can be a huge cross for an artist (just take the story of Tori Amos) or an unprecedented workhorse. It is as it is, no one else does how the music of all those pressed keys fills the air. He is another artist on stage, a colleague in himself. Now, if you add to this protagonist a mournful soprano voice, halfway between the influences of a James Blake lost in chamber-pop and a psychoanalytic lyric, you make him wear a shiny black one-shoulder shirt that only highlights Douglas' diaphanous arms that twirl on the keyboard, we find ourselves in front of a swan that welcomes us with its harmonious and black story. When Douglas sings it seems like being in an English countryside or on a cliff overlooking the sea and feeling pleasantly crushed by one's conscience, as if in an inevitable torpor, the same that gratifies us in the splendor of a day of nothingness stuck on the sofa, where the The perception of emptiness is right there waiting to pounce on you.
What remains for me, however, beyond the rhythm-filled piano pop of Absentia (certainly one of Omni's most successful songs), art music and Douglas' incredible magnetism, it is there, that indissoluble bond between the artist and the piano. He tells us, there was a moment of stop, of need for change. But then, it was like finding yourself face to face with someone who you thought you had pushed out of your door, and then he stays there, at the first glance a flash starts and immediately yes, you are exactly where you were before the collapse – when they ignored each other the ravines and easily crossed the ridges. Except that between Douglas and the prince of all instruments there is an unfinished love story that cannot be concluded with a banal final word. I followed his hands moving on the keys, in the bluish backlight, throughout the concert. I watched him “tame” the instrument or rather, make it play, make it respond and everything. There is a vibration between piano and pianist that is everything, it is a communication that knows no risks because it accepts the other as its own mirror. How many loves would we be able to recover from such a loud tinkling of our souls? And the good Douglas Dare could answer us that recovering, returning to seeing ourselves in that light of grace that illuminated us in days of joy, is nothing more than an act that we already know, and no strategy is needed. ANDfri if we don't know how to swim/we're going in. We will find our way, of course, back to the one, or us, who made us so glorious.
Click here to see the photos of Douglas Dare at the Estragon in Bologna for the November 20th date (or scroll through the gallery below).
DOUGLAS DARE – The setlist of the Milan concert
Omni
Sailor
Absentia
Painter
Red Arrows
The Joy In Sarah's Eyes
Wherever You Are
Teach me
8w9zeros (Piano version)
Mouth to Mouth
Swim
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
