Mauro Malavasi

Mauro Malavasi (born 21 March 1957) is an Italian pianist, songwriter and producer.^[1]

Malavasi had during the early 1970s educated himself at the conservatory of Bologna, Italy in the composition, choir and orchestral disciplines. During those years he also developed his piano to become a masterly piano player. After a crucial meeting in Bologna, Italy, with businessman Jacques Fred Petrus in the mid 1970s the pair created a production company called Goody Music Productions (GMP) in 1978. After their first project release that year called Macho (including the top ten track "I'm A Man") the followed up that success with new projects like Peter Jacques band and Revanche. All these projects were to be considered more or less studio projects that toured successfully both in Europe and in the US with several different line-ups during the late 1970s. Malavasi, that was Petrus' right hand and closest co-worker, wrote most of the tracks on the earliest projects before he got more competition from other by Petrus used Italians like Davide Romani and Paolo Gianolio and later on even from American songwriters like Kashif, Timmy Allen and Kevin Robinson.

Petrus and Malavasi launched several new projects during the 1980s like Change, B. B. & Q. band and High fashion. Change became both Malavasi's and Petrus' biggest success. During 1980-1983 Malavasi wrote several hits of which "Searching" (#1 spot for nine weeks on Billboard's Club Play Singles chart; featuring Luther Vandross) by Change in 1980, "On the Beat" (#8 spot on for FMA-Milanthe Billboard Black Singles chart), "Time for Love", "Starlette" and Mistakes" from B. B. & Q. band's 1981 album and "I'll do my best (for you baby)" (#17 on Billboard's Club Play Singles chart) by The Ritchie family in 1982 are the highlights.

After 1983 Malavasi left Petrus due to the latter's financial problems and embarked on a successful career as songwriter and producer outside the Petrus sphere with mostly Italian artists like Lucio Dalla although also scoring Italian hits with the group Cube and a pan-European smash hit with 'Letter From My Heart' performed by Brit vocalist Steve Allen and later Italian superstar Andrea Bocelli. Malavasi co-produced several Bocelli albums from 1997 until the present, of which Romanza (title track written by Malavasi) from 1997 earned huge success and reached the # 1 spot on both Billboard's Heatseekers and Top World Music Albums charts. The collaboration brought Malavasi back to his original roots of classic music that he studied at the conservatory at Bologna in the early 1970s.

For FMA-Milan, Mauro Malavasi is now supervising, among others, the artistic production of the Canadian classical-crossover soprano Karine Carusi, whose album Bolero (2006) has been released in Japan by PonyCanyon Inc. Her voice and artistry have been defined by Tokyo's CD Journal as proper of a "post Kathleen Battle".

References