Hello Danielle how are you?
Daniele Liveran: I'm Fine thanks...very busy but very happy! :))

You are the founding member of the Genius project, and you are also busy with Empty Tremor and you release at the same time
a solo album. Where do you find time to be on all fronts?
I really do only music in my life...so that's the secret to manage all these projects...I simply don't feel the needs of doing
other things... so I use to spend my time on the music...and I like to share time with great musicians and to stay into the
music sceene... It's a personal choice...I tried many times to do something different that music but I always got depress...he he
so I turned back to music! :)
Of course it takes a lot of coordination and organizzation...but I don't feel the pressure since I like what I'm doing and
I've always dreamed of doing these type of things...so everything runs very smooth!

What are the countries that welcomed ‘Genius part 1’ the better?
I must say that France and Japan have been certainly the best, these 2 nations really gave me a lot of good responces from both
press and fans.
But in general I had a good responce from all around the world...I was really happy about that, being a newcomer it's not easy to
break into the market you know...

Since 3 or 4 years, rock opera are quite numerous. Is it, according to you, a fashion effect or is there a real request from the audience?
I don't know exactly if it's a fashion, I've been thinking to make a rock opera since 1996/97 so to me it's something that has been
growing in my mind since many years ago, even before mosto of the known rock operas came out int the market.
I think that a Rock Opera is a nice way to put a story in music, and to give emotions to the listeners.It's also a good way to gather togheter
good sigers and good musicians to offer a nice combination of quality artist to the fans.

Isn’t it hard to gather and to work with so many musicians at the same time?
I must say that it has been hard to handle everything but at the end the result came out as I wanted. There's a lot of contacts to
keep track of and tons of telephone calls, expeditons and emails/faxes to do.
Basically the music tracks have been produced in the same session days, this to get a sort of similarity and continuity to
the sound of the 3 records.
Then each guest has recorded in his home town, followed by their producers that usually work with them for their personal records.
Basically everyone has chosen a personal producer for the Vocals and recorded into their usual studios locally in their town,
I was very happy with this choice cause everyone of them knew the right person to work with and some of them are also very
good producers as well...
It was pretty a lot of time and work to make everything work fine, decide all the formats and speaking to all the producers has
taken so much time, and also some problems have happened....but nothing too major!:)
I sent away all the music, the lirics and charts and I followed all the recording via internet giving the final ok and my suggestion on the recording
from my studio here in italy....
I decided to give very much freedom to the guest singers, everyone would have had the possibility of expressing his style into the character....
When I got back all the vocals tracks it took me months to edit and join everything! Every duet had to be perfect and every vocal part would have
been in the right place...
I made some postproduction adjustement and I took some decisions on how and what use or not of the
material and versions the singers gave me, but I had a GREAT material to choose on and it was so great time for me!!

Are there some musicians who refused to participate to your project?
I had some contacts with some singers that finally didn't agreed to sing in the second episode acutally, like Bobby Kimball of Toto, Cristina
Scabbia of lacuna coil, Sammy Hagar...the felt not to be fitting the parts I was offering them...anyway they gave me positive opinion on
the music and this has positive in any case for me.
Anyway I've been dealing with many singers in the period of the casting and I can't remember all of them sorry...I made a lot of research
to find the right voices for the new Genius characters...

Bringing a rock opera as ‘Genius’ to the stage seems difficult. Isn’t it frustrating to think that ‘Genius’ will remain a studio project?
It will be of course difficult to create a show with all the original Gensiu guest singers, I would really be another dream
come true for me!
Anyway I'm prepared to put togheter a reduced cast and a band and I'll definitely tour if the sales will be good enough to get
the interest of the businnes in having Genius Trilogy on stage....
I would also ge great to make a video or even a full film of the story....maybe Steven Spielberg at the direction...wouldn't be great?
Well let's do one step at the time...I definitely think that it's not so frustrating to think that Genius will remain a studio album with
no live performance...in my opinion it's so great for me to even have been able to put togher such a great cast for the record that
I don't feel so much frustrated if I won't be able to play it live.

Will it be a ‘Genius III’?
Yes of course, the music and lyrics for episode 3 is still ready and everything is already written.
Just to tell you how the events have been happening year by year, the idea of composing a Rock Opera trilogy has born gradually in
my mind during different steps of experimentation.
The story I used for 'Genius' trilogy was written by me many years ago.
The original name of this story was 'Daily Trauma' and it's a short book that I wrote back in 1997.
I use to write in my speare time and I love to write fantastic stories, not tipical sword and horses fantasy
concepts, I prefer pretty much psycologial and futuristic stories, I've always been fascinated by alternative reality concepts, human
subconscious and dreams interpretation...
Gradually I developed that 'Daily Trauma' little book story, I added more details, more concepts and story events...
and I started to think that it would have probably worked for some kind of music project too...
So as a first natural step I composed, with the help of my friend and great drummer gear Dario Ciccioni,
some instrumental music that followed the events of that story as a sort of soundtrack.
The story was divided into 18 chapters so I wrote 18 songs, each one was describing in music the events and
the athmosphere of the realtive chapter with many special effect and noises added that could fit with th story.....
In that experience I created a lot of melodies and ideas that would have been used and developed also in the later trilogy.
The result of this first step of creation on 'Daily Trauma' story was an instrumental album of 18 songs.
All the songs were stricrly connected to the story , even if it was all instrumental music.
I have produced this album with that music and I called it 'Daily Trauma' too.
I wanted to have everything in my hands in terms of sound and so I decided to play Guitars, bass and keys.
Dario Ciccioni played drums (same team situation of Genius Trilogy...)
So the idea of Daily Trauma was like a sort of instrumental soundtrack idea, to be listened while reading the story
that would have been inserted in the booklet for the listener.
The basic style is heavy and modern but in many points is very various and includes many softer rock styles..
That sort of album/book has never been released at that time, I didn't had interesting offers from the labels and I prefered
to keep in in my pocket...
Due to my new relation with Frontiers records I will release it by Frontiers togheter with the second episode as a bonus release related
to the trilogy, so also this instrumental album will be released on 24th May 2004.
At that point I decided develope this concept and push myself more into a more complete and big musical opera.
I've always been attracted by big classic operas of the great past composer line Verdi Puccini and others, and I basically
come from classical music education...composing an opera with many singers was something that I always dreaned of.
Infact I thought that the 'Daily Trauma' story would have worked great also for a more complete Rock Opera
with many characters singing...and I started to push myself more far and started to write down a complete music and lyrics score of
an opera in 3 episodes that followed the same concept of Daily Trauma.
All the characters would have taken the voices of the singers and a narrative part would be acted by a storyteller voice
over during the album...
So here's how 'Genius' trilogy idea is borned.
I decided to call the opera 'Genius' cause 'Daily Trauma' was already the name of my book that I wrote down in 1997 and
also the name of the instrumental album i already recorded.
I wanted to keep separated the 2 stuff...anyway Genius is the main character of 'Daily Trauma' and I also thought
that it was a smarter name for a opera....
So basically we have a story written in 1997, an instrumental album recorded in 1998 and then I started in 1999 to work at a
3 album rock opera trilogy.

Once the promotion of your different projects will be done, what will your plans be? Go on vacation (laughs)?
I use to get depressed when I go on vacation (laughs)! My real vacation is the music and staying with other musician in a very
creative and stimlating ambient.
Well, seriously, the future seems to be even more busy than the present cause I'm currently working at the completation of Genius episode 3
(casting and lyrics adaptation, cause the music is ready since 2000 when I recorded all the trilogy base tracks), I'm going to produce another Khymera album soon ,
I'm moving the first step for a new rock opera composition right now but this time I won't be alone, I will be with a new parthner
musician that I discovered lately. I'm talking about an opera that will be probably released after the genius episode 3 in the future...
he's a great musicians very similar to my philosophy of making music and you'll be hearing of him a lot in the future! I have also
another project with some great new young talented musicians here in Italy that I'm working at the moment to see what could be possibily
come out...I'm also writing new material with Empty Tremor so I've a lot of great new music and collaboration for the future...stay tuned!!!!

We now know your different works. Could you tell us a bit more about Daniele Liverani, as for example what are the musicians or bands hat influenced you?
I listen to a wide range of music. With my band Empty Tremor I make prog metal since the personality of the band is on that direction,
but if you listen to Genius Rock Opera trilogy you'll heat that my influences are very wide and a like to compose and play
lots of different styles, from power metal to prog metal to Classical music, complicated and linear/easy songs...
I basically come from classic music, I studied piano for 10 years...then I approached rock music, so in my heart there are
still influences from Mozart, Bach, Chopin, then also Ac Dc, Van Halen, Malmsteen, Jason Becker and Steve Vai...then all musicians
I listen gave me a little of inspiration of course...but these I listed are the main ones.

If you were to leave for a desert island, what would be the 10 albums that you would take with you (metal or other)?
I'd say:
Ac Dc-Back In Black
Van Halen I
Metallica-Black Album
Racer X-Live Extreme volume I
Dream Theater-Images and Words
Dream Theater-Scenes From A Memory
Cacophony-Speed Metal Symphony
Steve Vai-Passion and Warefare
Jason Becker-Perpetual Gratitude
and as the last one let me bring a compilation with all my records in that island of course! (laughs)

Thanks a lot for your support...it's really precious for me!
best,
Daniele Liverani