The Stolen Cello Redi Hasa

• Redi Hasa:
• 1 Dajti Mountain 04:18
• 2 Cherry Flowers 02:52
• 3 Wave 05:29
• 4 Little Street Football Made Of Socks 03:11
• 5 Seasons Going By 03:32
• 6 1990 Autumn Escape 02:18
• 7 The Snow 04:32
• 8 Shadows Drown On The Streets 04:05
• 9 The Silence Of The Trail 02:51
• 10 Time 05:44
• 11 Butterfly 02:49
• 12 The Prayer Of The Moon 04:52
• Total Runtime 46:33

Info for The Stolen Cello

Cellist Redi Hasa, who has performed with Ludovico Einaudi, has announced his first solo album,The Stolen Cello, will be released on 4 September 2020. The recording is Redi Hasa’s inspiring story of survival during the Albanian conflict in the early 1990s and his new life in Italy with his most prized possession: a stolen cello. Redi Hasa released the first single, ‘Seasons Going By’, from his new album today.

Redi Hasa was taught to play the cello by his mother and had learnt the entire cello repertoire by the age of 13, performing on an instrument owned by the state Music Academy. In 1989, as the Berlin Wall fell, Albania hurtled towards civil war, overwhelmed by poverty and financial unrest.

“I am afraid to leave the house. We are all afraid,” said Redi as he remembered the political unrest. He fled Albania, to escape the escalating violence, and joined his brother in Italy. Here he began the second act of his life having taken with him the only item that could be of any help: the Academy cello, no longer on loan, but stolen.

Redi Hasa worked for many years with Ludovico Einaudi as part of his hugely successful touring group, and performed on Einaudi’s recordings Seven Days Walking, In A Time Lapse and Elements. The No. 1 UK Classical Chart album Seven Days Walking: Day One became the fastest-streamed album ever from a classical composer in its first week of release, and Redi toured with Einaudi throughout 2019 and early 2020.

Redi Hasa showcases the “singing” nature of the cello throughout his new album, The Stolen Cello, exploiting the instrument’s human-like voice with his deeply personal story of hope and survival. He explained, “It is time to tell something about myself. My memories, my land, my childhood. My memory is like a dream. I want to go back to that dream.”

Redi Hasa, cello

Redi Hasa
Music has always been a part of Redi Hasa's life. He was born into a family of artists in Tirana in 1977 – his mother, a cello teacher, his father, a dancer trained in classical ballet, and his brother, a concert pianist – he was brought up around musical instruments and sheet music. After a brief attempt at studying violin, he discovered his true love for the cello at age six, which his mother had first taught him to play, only to then carry on with it during his journey at the Virtuos School of Music and the Academy of Arts in Tirana where he graduated from in 1998. In that same year, a boat trip ushered in a period which took him from his Albanian origins onto a new life in Italy, in Salento, where he completed his course studies through a scholarship at the Tito Schipa Conservatory of Lecce. Right from the outset, he chose to mix different musical genres, in particular the blending of the preciseness of classical training with the immediacy of folk music traditions, all the while honing his signature sound which is both fluid and raw; a sound he has become known for through the years.

In the first years of 2000, he contributed to bringing the rhythms of Balkan music to Salento by co-founding the BandAdriatica. He collaborated in this context with, among others, Officina Zoè, Xanti Yaca, Salento Orchestra, Manigold, Adria, Admir Shkurtaj Trio, Enza Pagliara, Valerio Daniele, and Rocco Nigro.

In 2012 he “seduced” maestro Ludovico Einaudi with his sound. Einaudi, who had been concertmaster at the time for the Notte della Taranta Music Festival, then included him permanently in his ensemble. Redi Hasa has recorded two albums with Einaudi, “In a Time Lapse” and “Elements”, and has toured extensively with him, performing on stages in hundreds of cities all over the world.

Hasa simultaneously continues to carry forth his duo project with singer Maria Mazzotta, a “Mediterranean bridge” that combines repertoires ranging from folk music traditions of Italy and Albania, and later also of France and North Africa. After “Ura” (Finis Terrae, 2014) came the second Hasa-Mazzotta album “Novilunio” in 2017, produced by Ponderosa Music & Art and recorded, like the first one, at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios with sound engineer Tim Oliver, who has collaborated with artists such as Peter Gabriel and Robert Plant.

It was none other than Robert Plant, founder of Led Zeppelin, who caught wind of Redi Hasa's work through the Einaudi tour and who, in 2017, invited him to record three tracks on his latest album, “Carry fire”. That same year, he recorded a track on the latest Blonde Redhead album, which is set to be released in the coming months.

Over the course of a twenty-year career, he has played with the Orchestra Popolare Italiana, King Naat Veliov, Kocani Orkestra, Ambrogio Sparagna, Mauro Pagani, Rita Marcotulli, and Pacifico: music of varied origins and genres from which Hasa draws inspiration, and from which he loves to let himself be 'contaminated' by and to intermingle with. He nurtures a very bodily and visceral relationship with the cello.

This album contains no booklet.