Luca Turilli


Luca Turilli is an Italian composer, arranger and producer, keyboardist, pianist and guitar player, constantly engaged in various musical projects.
Having always declared to love music at 360 degrees, Turilli has dedicated himself to multiple musical genres, ranging from trance and electronic music of his first compositions to symphonic and cinematic metal inspired by the world of soundtracks and also to modern pop / rock and piano compositions of his current productions.
He is one of the founders of the symphonic power metal band Rhapsody, later called Rhapsody of Fire. He also worked on a trilogy of solo albums as Luca Turilli, and released one album under the name of Luca Turilli's Dreamquest, a symphonic metal / rock project combined with electro pop elements he worked on alongside Dominique Leurquin.
All his albums have entered the main European charts and with Rhapsody has exceeded one million copies sold.
In 2008, Luca began an online guitar course titled Luca Turilli's Neoclassical Revelation. The course takes its name from his neoclassical playing style.
On every Rhapsody / Rhapsody of Fire album, Luca was the only lyricist and composed all the music with the keyboardist, Alex Staropoli and played most of the lead guitars. He composed and arranged all the music for both his solo projects. He played guitars on his solo trilogy and keyboards with Luca Turilli's Dreamquest featuring Dominique Leurquin as the guitarist.
In August 2011, some time after releasing the last album related with the heroic-fantasy saga on which all the lyrics and music of Rhapsody / Rhapsody of Fire were based until then, Turilli and Staropoli proceeded to a friendly split. Alex agreed to go on as Rhapsody of Fire, while Luca decided to move on as Luca Turilli's Rhapsody, adding his name on top of the logo because of trademark reasons and old legal settlements. In 2015, after releasing the debut album entitled Ascending to Infinity, the record company Nuclear Blast released the one defined by Turilli as one of the most important albums of his career: Prometheus, Symphonia Ignis Divinus.
One year later the same album was released under the title Prometheus, The Dolby Atmos Experience + Cinematic And Live. That album, mixed by producer/mixing engineer Chris Heil, was the first one in music history to be mixed in Dolby Atmos and its music was used by Dolby and Yamaha to promote Dolby Atmos technology worldwide.
From November 2016 to March 2018, Turilli and his former bandmates Fabio Lione and Alex Holzwarth who in the meantime had also left Rhapsody Of Fire, gathered to celebrate the band's 20th anniversary by playing their entire best-selling album Symphony of Enchanted Lands in a tour called 20th Anniversary Farewell Tour.
After the end of the Farewell Tour the initial intention was to close the Rhapsody chapter once and for all. We can say that the promoters and the fans, considering the success of that tour, basically convinced Luca and Fabio to go on with Rhapsody, although both had different artistic plans in mind. For legal reasons the new band was called Turilli / Lione Rhapsody. Both agreed to such plan and to use the same band name only if they could bring something really new to the table, combining their typical symphonic metal approach with all the modern music they like to listen to nowadays, evolving the sound, the image and the lyrical concept of the band to new horizons. To make this more than clear they agreed to entitle the album Zero Gravity and filled it with what they both love: vocal interludes à la Queen, progressive elements à la Dream Theater, electronic, ethnic music and more.
In both bands Luca Turilli's Rhapsody and Turilli / Lione Rhapsody, Luca Turilli is the only composer of all music and lyrics, orchestral arrangements and in addition to guitars he also played all the keyboard parts.
As in the case of Luca Turilli's Rhapsody, the lyrics are all about science, metaphysics, psychology, anthropology and in general related with the mysteries of life - Luca's greatest passion after what he started discovering thanks to his long-term yoga and meditation practices.
In early 2020 Luca Turilli stated in an interview with Steinberg that he feels the constant need to evolve and explore the world of music by creating new projects, finding new artistic goals and stimulations. He is currently working on the debut album of his new band presenting a modern pop/rock sound in the style of some of his actual favorite artists like Adele and bands like Muse and Imagine Dragons, enriched by electronic, ethnic music and all those symphonic elements which are now a real trademark in his discography.
Also, with the piano being his favorite instrument, he started working on his first album of “emotional cinematic piano”, featuring original piano solo instrumentals sometimes enriched by a few orchestral and choral parts, in the tradition of artists like Yann Tiersen, Ludovico Einaudi and Yiruma, some of the well-known piano composers of our time and a true inspiration to him, underlining his need for continuous artistic challenges and the need to express himself at 360 degrees.

Gear

Private Home Studio: To compose and arrange his music, Luca Turilli uses a template of over 6000 tracks based on the Cubase software.
He is using one main computer based on an Intel Xeon double processor and two additional “slave” PCs for a total of 256 GB of RAM. All template sounds are located on a total of 8 SSDs. Vienna Ensemble Pro is the additional software he is using for Cubase to “communicate” with the sounds located on the main PC and the two slaves.
It took 7 years of work in collaboration with Tobias Escher for Luca to have a universal template available allowing him to compose for most music styles and different music projects. Using the same template, he can now compose for all styles of pop, rock, metal, symphonic, ethnic, folk, ambient, trance, electronic, hip-hop or trap music.
Guitars: Turilli uses custom "Luca Turilli" electric guitars made by the French luthier Christophe Capelli. He has four of them being part of the first series and three of them being part of the new "Neoclassical revelation 2.0" Series.
Specifications:
His new signature guitars feature a DiMarzio Tone Zone pickup in the bridge position and DiMarzio Air Norton in the neck position.
They also feature maple necks, 22 fret ebony fingerboards with a custom "Tree of Life" inlays and Ibanez Lo-Pro Edge tremolo systems. The wood used for the body is alder.
Turilli uses Furch and Gibson acoustic guitars.
Pianos: Turilli owns Kawai and Schulze Pollmann pianos.

Biography

Turilli was born in Trieste, Venezia Giulia. His father was a cello player who passed away when Luca was only two years old. He clearly inherited his passion for classical music and at 16 years old he started playing guitar. At the age of 22 he started playing piano.
In 1993, Turilli survived cancer at age 21. The same year, he founded the band Thundercross, which was renamed Rhapsody after releasing the first demo, and renamed once again to Rhapsody of Fire for trademark reasons in 2006.

Playing style

Luca Turilli is influenced by guitarists such as Yngwie Malmsteen, Marty Friedman and especially Jason Becker with his neo-classical structuring and phrasing. His lead playing often includes extensive use of sweep picked arpeggios, tremolo picking, classically influenced phrases, and scales such as aeolian, harmonic minor, phrygian, locrian, and melodic minor. In his latest albums he introduced new ethnic elements too.
As a pianist his main influences are romantic pianists like Chopin and contemporary composers such as Ludovico Einaudi, Yann Tiersen, Yiruma and Philip Glass.

Discography

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