Amiata Records

A few months ago Amiata Records and its offices moved to the historic center of Rome. The building, which hosts the record label and a private university was built in 1882 and with its huge arches, columns and spaces it simply grabs the attention of the people passing by. It has also a chapel inside, which provides opportunity to organize chamber and sacred music concerts for the label's artists.

The Classica Series includes new, never-before-recorded compositions of the past brought to light by noted musicologists and researchers, performances done on rare and precious instruments of the era, and comparisons and contrasts between two interpretations of the same music by the same musician from a distance of fifty years. Highlights of the series include the internationally-acclaimed volumes of "Music of Ancient Rome" performed by the ensemble Synaulia, a group of paleorganologists and musicians dedicated to the study of ancient music. The celebrated "Music of Ancient Rome" recordings present a hypothetical reconstruction of the music of ancient Imperial Rome using original instruments constructed by musician and musicologist Walter Maioli and his research group. The first volume has been an international cultural event in news media and traditional record retail stores as well as in bookshops and museum stores. Its music has been featured in numerous films, including "Gladiator" (Dream/Works) "Midsummer night's dream" (Fox Searchlights Pictures) and "The Village" (Disney).

Multimedia Arts presents CD-ROMs and Enhanced CDs (normal audio CDs which play on stereo systems plus a ROM track to access on computers). The titles are innovatively packaged and feature extensive booklets. In our multimedia series, one finds collaborations between visual artists and musicians (Flavio Piras and Paolo Fresu), and educational projects such as the Moroccan title and the multimedia Atlas of Music of the African continent.

The Inner Arts Series presents highly creative projects and performances which stretch the boundaries of normal categorization. It's acoustic-instrumental, then ambient, then meditative music then Now Age or rather, no age... Featured are the double-bass player and composer Andrea Donati, Paolo Giaro with Krishna Bhatt on sitar and Debiprasad Gosh on sarod, the pianist Antonio Breschi, Auria Vizia, Adea, the Neji Trio and the Saphir String Quartet. The music is in large part acoustic, its spirit joyful and refined; a cross-fertilization between East and West, North and South; acoustic and electronic; vocal and instrumental; improvisational and notated; spiritual and popular.

The Cutting Edge series features innovative productions of contemporary electronic music, chill-out and lounge. Femme fatale Giorì provides an archetype for French chanson of the 21st century. The Paris-based MJA (Metropolitan Jazz Affair) is at the leading edge of Nu-Jazz, combining their trumpet-and fender rhodes-driven group sound with guest vocalists and saxophonists. Projects such as "Bloom" and the Diana Garden line are "designer compilations" which create a musical and lifestyle atmosphere in collaboration with trend-setting Italian clubs.