If Tolkien was a musician
Interview conduct July 2019
by Dan Locke
Ainur is a Progressive Rock Orchestra inspired by Tolkien’s world.
Italy’s progressive rock-metal orchestra AINUR has just unleashed the new (old) single ‘Fall Of Gondolin’.
Inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s opus for a decade and a half, AINUR are back with a re-recorded and re-mixed version of their 2006’s ‘Fall of Gondolin’, foreseeing the much awaited 5th full-lenght coming out later this year.
Dan Locke: Why did you pick the name Ainur?
AINUR: Hello everybody! Have you ever read the Tolkien’s “Silmarillion” incipit? He wrote that the Middle-Earth was created by Iluvatar (a sort of Christian’s God, if you haven’t read it) and by Ainur’s Music. They are something like “angels”, a kind of divine creatures. This world’s creation has been called Ainulindalë and it seems to us that if we wanted to re-create Tolkien’s world in our Music Ainur would have been the only way to call this project!
How was your band created?
We can tell you’ve understood we are Tolkien’s fan and expert (normal people call us NERD XD). So, while we were taking part in a Tolkien’s Reading Club, we started thinking about putting his tales into Music. One of us (Gianluca Castelli, ex composer, and keyboards player) brought there a song he composed and it was “Ulmo’s Voice” that was included then in our first album “From Ancient Times”. And history began there.
You band takes JRR Tolken as an inspiration. Does this include all his series of work including after his death “Silmarillion”?
Actually (maybe you won’t believe us) we always composed our album BEFORE the new releases of Tolkien’s Estate. We made “Children of Húrin” almost 2 months before the book was published and we made “Lay of Leithian” 1 year before “Beren & Luthien” book (more or less). So, we can tell that our main inspiration is the “Silmarillion”, but we could take also something from “The History of Middle-Earth” (that is a 12-books-project published after JRR Tolkien’s death)
There are 12 people in the band. Who are the core people which people would define as the key persons in the band?
Yes, Ainur is 12 musicians + 1 lyricist:
Luca Catalano: guitars, backing vocals, composer
Marco Catalano: drums, backing vocals, composer
Alex Armuschio: keys, lead & backing vocals, composer
Giuseppe Ferrante: basses and double bass
Luca Marangoni: violin
Carlo Perillo: viola
Daniela Lorusso: cello
Chiara Marangoni: horns
Cristiano Blasi: flutes
Max Clara: lead vocals
Roberta Malerba: lead vocals
Elena Richetta: lead vocals
Wilma Collo: lyricist
Actually, we use to define the composers as the key persons (so now Luca, Marco, and Alex). In the previous albums also Gianluca Castelli was one of the main composers, but he has to leave Italy due to his Orchestra Director role (now he’s living and working in Germany). But we are all “key persons”, since one (or more) of us is assigned to communications and social networks, another one is the writer of the instrument’s scores, one is the person-in-charge to manage the logistical aspects, etc…
Are the 12 people who have been in the band since day one?
No, not all of them but a lot of. For example, we had a change of flute player, so Cristiano started to play with us after the first album. Even the string section had some changes in the past and we changed a lot of singers. But now we play with this formation for a lot of time. As we use to say: Ainur is not a band, is a family.
Since you are from Italy, I am going to name some bands from Italy or that are Italian. I would like to you say something about each.
We must admit that we are more interested in foreigner music, but ok, we will try!
Laura Pausini
None of us is a real fan of Laura’s Music. But we must admit that her music is famous all over the world, so we can only thanks her to bring Italy outside the borders.
Rhapsody of Fire
Wow. How could we say anything about that? RoF is one of the best metal band we ever heard and we spent our childhood singing “For the King, for the Land, for the Mooooountains”. We use to do that even right now!
Lacuna Coil
Cristina and Lacuna Coil raise the bar of Italian Rock. We had a beer together with some of them some time ago in a Turin’s pub (we don’t think they remember that), but it will be great if we could play together in the future!
Christian Death
We don’t think they are really Italians 😉 It’s not the kind of rock/metal that we are used to listening to and we don’t know a lot about them.
Spagna
Cos I’m a lady, lady, lady, easy lady! Do we have to say anything else? 😉
Oh yes, wait! Maybe you don’t know that, but she performed the Italian version of “The Circle of Life” from Disney’s “Lion King”…we will always be grateful to her for this!
Groveworm
Since we are 12+1, of course, we are more “open-minded” than you could think 😉 So some of us listen to Groveworm with pleasure. But we could say they’re not the majority 😉
Sonya Scarlet/Theatres des Vampires
They really like their “fantasy” mood, even if it’s something about Vampires and not Elves and Dwarves 😉 Sonya has a really peculiar voice, very scratched and powerful. Sometimes she remembers us a kind of possessed-Lady GaGa 😉
Giorgia Fumanti
Giorgia is an extraordinary soprano. We think that here in Italy she has not the success she deserves (in fact she moved to Canada). Opera here in Italy is a very difficult and strange world. And when you try to cross Opera with pop/rock music you will find someone that will say “Another Bocelli, another Pavarotti”. Italians are really poor open mind listeners.
Opera IX/Cadaveria
They are geographically very near to us since they are from Biella and Cadaveria is from Turin, but we never crossed our paths. Maybe because their music is a little bit harder than ours. Sometimes Fantasy Music is associated to growl, scream, black metal. Our Fantasy, instead, is more folk, progressive, symphonic.
Gala
You must promise you’ll never say that to anyone…but we must admit at least one time in our 12+1 lives we danced upon “Come Into my Life” or “Freed from Desire”. Don’t tell to anyone. Please 😉
Chiara Civello
Great, great artist. Jazz is very insidious: you can be boring; you can be too much or too less technical. Chiara’s performances are an injection of serenity and peace.
In your music do you include Tolkien’s invented languages with your music?
We did it rarely. But our singer Roberta and his husband Luca have their own parallel project called “Silme” and they compose and write lyrics in Elvish language, with the collaboration of a big friend of us, Roberto Fontana, that is one of the maximum experts of Tolkien’s languages here in Italy. So, some Ainur uses Tolkien’s languages, even if in Ainur’s project we did it very rarely.
Has everyone in the band seen the extended versions of the Hobbit Trilogy (which is 23hour 42 mins)?
We did something worst (or better, it’s up to you). We watched “The Lord of the Rings” extended version in Cinema when it came out; then we did the same thing for “The Hobbit” trilogy; then we did the same thing for the 8 Harry Potter movies; then we did several Star Wars Marathon, every time a new movie was announced…Have you ever seen Sheldon Cooper and their friends in The Big Bang Theory? Same thing. But we are 12+1.
Is there a Middle Earth?
There are a lot of Middle-Earth. You can find them in a book, in a song, in a place you love. We have found our personal Middle-Earth in The Shire Inn at Montalenghe (TO). Google it (Locanda Della Contea Montalenghe) and you will fall in love with that as we felt. For sure.
Since your band has been together for a long time, do some to the band members work on other projects and can you talk about it?
Every band member has one or more parallel projects. We could never think about our music to be confined to a single project. Luca and Roberta have the “Silme” project, as we have said before. Alex has his solo project and he plays with Ossi Duri, that is a Zappa-influenced-band; Giuseppe has several southern rock projects, while Marco has his Harry Potter Symphonic project. The classical section plays also with Orchestras and Jazz Quartet/Quintet. Max sings in some progressive metal band like Vurtula. And a lot of other things that now we are surely forgetting 😉
With 12 people who are credited on your cd can you tell me the working process of getting your music together?
Yes. The process working. First of all, you could see 12+1 persons credited on our CDs, but I can tell you that the number of persons who are actually involved in our works is bigger and bigger. Our families, for example. You could think it’s a marginal effect, but if you think about one/two more person in addiction the number is 26 or 39. Then the label, the sound engineers, the graphic team, the booking agency, Kevin, our manager…A lot of people and every one of them is important.
Managing rehearsals or recording session is the hardest part of our project. And often we must compose separately and then assign the scores to the musicians. It’s not easy, sometimes it’s really really hard. But when we listen to the “final product” every problem disappears.
What do you think of digital music?
If you asked this when we published our first album, we would have said that Digital Music would have been the Future. Now we must tell that Digital Music is the Present. If you want to be a musician in 2019 you cannot refrain from Digital Music publishing. Beautiful? Awful? We don’t know. Nowadays we release our single “Fall of Gondolin” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fhv212X2qhg) and you can listen that at the same time in Japan or in Italy or in Sweden. You don’t have to wait for the release of the physical copies in the store at the end of the street. And maybe this aspect, that is the best part of the Digital Era, it’s also the worst.
You sell your music on many different performs. Which does the best for you, (Bandcamp, iTunes, Spotify, your website or others)?
We had some “internet issues” in the past because our previous label didn’t want to push on digital distribution. So, our digital platform is almost “brand-new” and we don’t have an accurate historical. On the contrary, our personal website (www.ainur.it) was the only way to find us online for a lot of time, so we could tell that our website store is the best online platform, until now.
Any plans to tour this year?
Not at the moment. We are concentrating all of our energies to the creation of the new album with Rockshots Records that will talk about…. ups, no spoiler allowed 😉 Follow us to be updated in real-time 😉
If you headlined a tour. Who would you like to support you as an open artist?
Oh, we would like to have Ayreon, or Symphony X, or Dream Theater…:-P Seriously speaking, there is a lot of Italian reality that we would like to share the stage with: from Rockshots Records label, Ozora or Soundstorm, for example. One thing is sure: we’d like to have a support band. Because it’s one of the best things a band could do for another.
How do you see yourself in 5 years?
Older 😉 You don’t know, but we have our future planned for decades! In ONLY 5 years we will: publish this new album; compose and publish the next one; start working on the final chapter of a trilogy of albums (super spoiler here!); have a child or two (inside the band, of course); have more interviews with you, maybe!
Anything in closing you like to say?
Very trivial: we’d like to thank you for this opportunity and we hope we could do that again in the future! We also want to thank our label, Rockshots Records, because since the beginning the guys there have always been excited to work with us and working in this powerful ambiance is great!
So, what…follow us! And, of course, share our Music.
And as Tolkien was used to say…Elen síla lúmenn’omentielvo
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