Bio

Omar Pedrini - Biography
THE BEGINNINGS 1980-1989
At the beginning of the 80’s in Brescia the main meeting point for newcomers bands is the Deskomusic competition and it is precisely here that Precious Time takes shape. Omar Pedrini, in addition to being the guitarist and leader, is author of the lyrics and music. The early formation sees him, Francesco Renga vocals, Diego Galeri drums, Enrico Ghedi keyboards and Pietro Paolo Pettenadu on bass who will later be replaced by Davide Cavallaro. The victory in Deskomusic in 1986 opens the doors of the recording room to the group: the first single will be entitled Signor no, a track with a strongly anti-militarist content, dedicated to Amnesty International. The peculiarity of proposing rock material written and interpreted in Italian brings a certain fame to the band and their name begins to circulate among the experts, but success is still far away. In 1987 the choice to change the name to Timoria, a term derived from the Greek (τιμωρια), which can mean punishment but also revenge, matured. It is precisely the desire for revenge, especially towards those who have always considered them time wasters, to push them to choose the definitive name. Also in 1987 they took part in another competition, this time more prestigious, the Rock Targato Italia where they won an audition with Polygram. It is a year full of satisfactions for the group that begins to perform live with great frequency, ending up totaling about 30 thousand admissions to their summer concerts. In October 1988 they presented the mini-LP `` Macchine e Dollari ''. Polygram expects critical feedback from this record to understand whether or not to take advantage of the option to make a real album. The formation of the group is not yet the definitive one: Enrico Ghedi is engaged in fits and starts due to military service and Carlo Alberto `` Illorca '' Pellegrini is missing, who will join the group the following year, taking over from Davide Cavallaro. The definitive line-up debuts on June 13 in Florence in a solidarity concert dedicated to the students of Piazza Tiananmen. THE FIRST ALBUMS 1990-1992
After the release of some singles and mini-LPs, the first album `` Colori che esplodono '' finally arrives in April 1990, with Gianni Maroccolo, former bassist of Litfiba, in the production. The title of the album is a clear homage by Omar Pedrini to the great artists of the past, such as Van Gogh, who enhanced the close link between the various artistic expressions. The single Milano (non è l'America) is extracted from the album, of which the first video clip is made, accompanied by unpublished images by Wim Wenders, which gets a good rotation on Videomusic. The group leaves for a tour that touches 35 Italian cities and takes it to perform in Paris on June 21, for the annual music festival. The tour goes on until the end of the nineties. In his spare time, Omar Pedrini sketches the songs to be included in the new album, planned for the spring of 1991. The year begins with an unusual and courageous participation at the Sanremo Festival desired by their manager. The Timoria present themselves with L’uomo che ride in the new proposals category. The appearance at the Festival is really fast, since they are already eliminated during the first evening.
Despite this, the Timorias stir something up among the insiders so much so that the journalists decide on the spot to establish a Critics Award reserved for new proposals and immediately assign it to the group. The Critics Award for the new proposals is still foreseen at the Festival and reserved for the piece that more than others will have highlighted original and innovative texts, music or contents. L’uomo che ride is included in the group's second album, `` Ritmo e dolore '', which comes out in March of the same year and sees Gianni Maroccolo again in production. Contrary to what the group expects, the critics do not use triumphalistic tones as for the previous work, but is still interested in the record. In this period the rumor of a probable dissolution of the band begins to circulate but it does not happen. At the beginning of 1992 the Timorias change manager and Angelo Carrara takes over, famous at that time for his collaboration with Luciano Ligabue. In May of the same year `` Stories per vivere '' was released, a very heartfelt record, the son of the crisis period, even if the members are not particularly happy with the final result, given that Carrara prefers to highlight the singer's voice, rather than the sound of the instruments. The record does not take off and the group seems to have lost the desire to play, so Carrara decides to have “Storie per vivere” re-released with the addition of a song signed by his pupil Ligabue, Male non fare. Ligabue himself, who was particularly impressed by the qualities of the Brescia quintet, decided to take him with him as a supporting group on his “Lambrusco, coltelli, rose & popcorn Tour”. Enthusiasm re-enters Timoria's veins, who set a deadline: the next record must be the definitive one, the best one, that of the leap in quality, otherwise the shop closes. THE TIMORIA’S SUCCESS | 1993-1998
In 1993, after working incessantly, `` Viaggio senza vento '' comes out, a sort of rebirth for the Timorias. The work is considered the best by them, thanks to its important form of concept album (the disc tells the metaphorical journey of the protagonist character Joe) and to the presence of prestigious guests such as Eugenio Finardi, Mauro Pagani and Candelo Cabezas. The radios begin to pass the tracks of the new CD and sales take off, allowing the group to win the first Golden Record of their career. The singles Senza Vento, a real generational anthem, and Sangue impazzito, perhaps the most representative piece of the group's discography, get a lot of success. A very long tour of 90 dates in ten months follows, which allows Timoria to be heard by almost 200,000 people. Fans are becoming more and more numerous. Among the most important concerts, certainly the 1994 edition of Sonoria, an Italian rock festival with an excellent cast, which sees them on stage with Sepultura, Helmet, Aerosmith and Whitesnake. At the end of the year Timoria return to the studio to work on the new album. In March 1995, `` 2020 SpeedBall '' came out, with a shock cover and a title that is an indictment against drugs. The album is much more `` heavy '' than the previous records of the group, presenting different sounds close to metal. Even in the lyrics there is a greater social criticism, which certainly makes it the `` hardest '' work of the band's discography. Timoria reconfirm the success of the previous album, obtaining their second Gold Disc for sales, and this allows them to perform also in Belgium, Switzerland, Germany and France, where the tour is particularly long and lays the foundations for future relationships. , as human as they are musical. One of the dates of the tour, the one at Rolling Stone in Milan on 18 December 1995, was resumed and recorded almost entirely, and ended up on the 1996 VHS entitled `` Timoria 1985-1995 '' (reissued on DVD in 2007).
The group is also invited to participate in the tribute to Augusto Daolio, the late leader of the Nomadi, for whom he records the classic Io vagabondo together with Gianna Nannini. Timoria are consecrated as one of the best rock bands on the Italian scene. In July 1996 Omar Pedrini released `` Beatnik – Il ragazzo tatuato di Birkenhead '', his first solo album, while preparations are already underway for the new Timoria album, constantly busy playing between Italy and France. The album, which sees the participation of guests such as Leon Mobley (Ben Harper), Dave Fuczinsky (John Zorn, Freak Power) and Luca `` 'O Zulù`` Persico dei 99 Posse, promises to be even more heterogeneous than the previous ones. `` Eta Beta '' comes out in February 1997 and is the most experimental work of Timoria's career, with a great contamination of different musical styles: it goes from jazz to rock, from metal to gospel, with some flashes of poetry. There is also a reference to France, thanks to the presence in the album of a song sung in French called `` Europanic '' and a cover of `` Zobi La Mouche '' by Les Négresses Vertes. Due to these various experiments, the album is not particularly understood in Italy, where it fails to repeat the success of the previous two, but it gets excellent feedback in France. A long tour follows, which starts in April and ends in November and marks the entry into the band of percussionist Filippo `` Pippo '' Ummarino. In August, during a break from the tour, Timoria collaborates with Antonella Ruggiero on the creation of two songs for her album “Registrationi Moderne”: Ti sento e c’è tutto un mondo intorno. In 1998 Francesco Renga decides to leave the group. Before leaving he participates in the publication of the anthology `` Senzatempo (Dieci Anni) '' which celebrates the 10-year career of the Brescia band with an original retrospective, in which the group's classics are placed alongside songs in live or alternate versions and real rarities. Renga appears for the last time as a voice in the two unpublished Cuore mio, for which a video clip that collects the best moments of the first formation of Timoria is produced, and Terra senza eroi. THE NEW CYCLE | 1998-2003
Between 5 and 7 June 1998 Omar Pedrini is engaged, as artistic director, in the organization of Brescia Music Art, a three-day event of music, painting, writing, poetry, video installations and much more that brings to the Lombard capital 883 , Jovanotti, CSI, Alberto Fortis, Marco Lodola, Mark Kostabi, Emidio Clementi, Enrico Ruggeri, Madaski, Daniele Silvestri and other artists, with interdisciplinary performances and for this reason even more unusual and interesting. Here the relationship with Marco Lodola is cemented, in whose artistic laboratory - Lodolandia, a space created inside a former factory, in Pavia - Timoria make a large part of `` 1999 '', the first album without Francesco Renga. It is in Lodolandia that Timoria make the public listen to the previews of the new album on November 5th. The new cycle of the group has definitively begun, which Omar Pedrini defines as «a transversal union of artists, a project of cosmetics and reinterpretation of reality and of research and enhancement of beauty». On January 28th 1999 the new album is released, simply titled `` 1999 '', testifying to a new beginning for Timoria. Marco Lodola creates an ad hoc sculpture for the album cover, that is a colored glass horse. In March a new tour begins which culminates, after more than eighty concerts, on December 31st in Piazza della Loggia in Brescia with a concert for the new millennium. In 2001, after a year of break, `` El Topo Grand Hotel '' was released, the group's tenth work and second concept album (the record takes up the adventures of Joe started in `` Viaggio senza vento '').
The album sees the participation of Article 31, in the song Mexico. The Timorias return to great success, obtaining their third Golden Disc in their career and organizing `` El Topo electrico tour '' which begins in May and touches major Italian centers during the summer. At the end of the year, `` El Topo Grand Hotel '' ranked third best album of 2001 in the referendum held by the specialized magazine Musica e Dischi.
In 2002 Timoria participated for the second time, this time in the Big category, at the Sanremo Festival with the song Casa mia, then included in the new album `` Un Aldo qualunque sul treno magico'', which came out on April 5 of the same year. In addition to presenting itself as the band's new album, the work also acts as a soundtrack to the film `` Un Aldo qualunque '' directed by Dario Migliardi and starring Fabio De Luigi. To crown the discourse pursued by the Timoria, who have always contaminated their music with forays into other artistic fields, Omar Pedrini plays the role of an unleashed rock priest (Don Luigi) in the film. ``Un Aldo qualunque sul treno magico`` is a record with strong Beat colors, with psychedelic forays that recall the musical world of the sixties / seventies, however, dirtied by the rock sound that has distinguished Timoria from the beginning of their career. Shortly after the group farewells with a double live cd entitled `` Timoria Live - Generation Without Wind '', recorded at Alcatraz and Leoncavallo in Milan and published in 2003.
THE SOLO CAREER
In 2002, with the release of the double live CD, Omar Pedrini's experience with Timoria ended and his new artistic career began. Already in 1996 he had experimented with solitary navigation with the musical-literary disc `` Beatnik – Il ragazzo tatuato di Birkenhead '', dedicated to his myths of the Beat Generation and printed in only 7,000 copies. In 2004 he made his debut as a soloist at the Sanremo Festival with “Lavoro inutile”, receiving the special prize for the best text in addition to the previous critics' prize for “L’uomo che ride” with Timoria in 1991. After the festival he released his second CD from soloist `` Vidomar ''. In June 2004 he was forced to stop all activities due to a delicate cardiovascular operation after an aortic aneurysm. After an eight-hour open heart surgery, his singing career seems to have ended forever. After the summer of 2004 he returned to work and at the end of the year he began collaborating with Rai as the author of the experimental program `` Robin Hood ''. Between 2005 and 2007 he writes and hosts `` Nu-Roads '', short pills on new trends and folk groups, broadcast on Saturday afternoon on Rai 2. Also for Rai he writes `` Milano in Musica '', went to aired at the end of 2005. Since 2005 he has also been a teacher of `` Laboratory of composition and realization of a pop song '' at the ``Master in Musical Communication for Discography and Media`` of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan.
In the summer of 2005 the doctors give him permission to return to perform and, after many months of inactivity, he resumes the acoustic live, returning to collaborate with other members of Timoria such as Enrico Ghedi (keyboards) and Filippo Ummarino (percussion) and other artists from the world of music, cinema, sculpture (for example Marco Lodola). On May 26, 2006 his third solo album `` Pane, burro e medicine '' was released, preceded by the ironic single “Shock”, which evokes his illness, and talks about love, jealousy that leads to madness, the charm of adolescence ( that the author lives in first person as the father of twelve-year-old Pablo), of La follia (``seen in its most romantic, visionary, peaceful and positively anarchic expression``) and contains the cover of “Tre Volte Lacrime”, one of the most representative songs of the band rock new wave by Diaframma. The album is dedicated to Luigi Veronelli. Also in 2006 he starred with Roberta Garzia (Camera Café) in the short film `` Un casale, due gessetti e tanti ricci'' directed by Claudio Uberti (assistant to Lina Wertmuller) and participated in the Rezophonic recording project, a charity initiative created for support AMREF Italia in the construction of water wells in Kajiado, one of the driest regions of East Africa. In the two-year period 2007-2008 he continued his activity as author and television presenter with new episodes of `` Nu-Roads '' and presented the program `` School of Rock '' on Rai2.
In 2009 he landed on the Gambero Rosso satellite channel with “Gamberock”: «Food, wine, culture and art are closely linked to each other: in Gamberock I try to propose food and wine suggestions linked to the territory». In 2010 he is the musical testimonial of the nascent Rai 5 for which he writes and leads `` Rock e I suoi fratelli''. In 2011 he made his radio debut on Rai Isoradio and, as the author of `` Contromano '', won the Golden Headphones for the best debut. On June 23, 2010 a new album entitled `` La capanna dello Zio Rock '' was released, described by Pedrini himself as a cool record with all the best of Timoria plus some unreleased. In 2011 he is on tour with his band and makes the title track of the soundtrack of the film `` Il figlio più piccolo'' by Pupi Avati in which he also plays a cameo. In the months of May and June 2011 he participates in the Edison Change The Music tour in some Italian universities, to promote eco-solidarity initiatives and the contest to select the band that will open the Bon Jovi concert on July 17, 2011 in Udine. Between the autumn of 2012 and the spring of 2013 he is on the screens of Rai 5 with his new program `` Pop - Journey into a song '', which tells the genesis and the background of the most successful songs of the Italian music scene. At the same time he performs at the Franco Parenti Theater in Milan with `` Sangue Impazzito - the first 24 hours from the myth of John Belushi '', written and created with Nicola Nocella. In 2013 he worked on a new album, with strong Brit-pop sounds, recorded in Manchester after a meeting with Noel Gallagher and the producer of Oasis. The album features the common influence of Paul Weller, his closeness to the working-class and the common roots that sink into British rock from the late sixties to the first half of the seventies of the Who, Beatles and Pink Floyd. On January 3, 2014 the single Che ci vado a do a Londra? which anticipates the release of the homonymous album distributed by Universal Music. On May 18, 2014 Verdiano Vera gave him the FIM Award as the best Italian rock artist in the context of the FIM, the International Music Fair of Genoa. Saturday 31 May 2014 at the Arena Sant'Elia in Cagliari participates in `` Sardegna Chi_Ama '', to promote a fundraising aimed at the reconstruction of Sardinian schools damaged by the flood of November 2013, where he performs with Paolo Fresu, artistic director of the manifestation.
Omar Pedrini can boast collaborations with Italian and foreign artists of any discipline, from the deus ex machina of the Milanese counterculture Gianni Sassi (Cramps, Milano Poesia, Fluxus), to the writer Aldo Busi, the painter Marco Lodola, Matteo Guarnaccia (the father of Italian psychedelia ), Leon Mobley (Ben Harper's musician), David Fuczynsky (New York guitarist of the Yiddish-jazz genre), Bertrand Cantat of Noir Désir, Eugenio Finardi (duet in Verso orient in the album `` Viaggio senza vento ''), Gianna Nannini and Ligabue. He shared the stage with C.S.I., Jovanotti and Nomadi in the concert for the Dalai Lama. Fabio Volo and Isabella Santacroce also performed live with Timoria, who read parts of their books, bringing back, thanks to Pedrini's passion, the performances of the Seventies. On 12 May 2017 he released the album `` Come se non ci fosse un domani '' for Warner Music, with 10 tracks in the CD version and 11 tracks in the vinyl version. The album, recorded and mastered between the Officine Meccaniche of Milan, the Poddighe Studio of Brescia and London, comes out three years after the previous work and marks a new beginning in the life of Omar Pedrini, what he himself defines his `` `` third time '', after the latest open heart surgery in October 2014. With this album Omar speaks to the youngest and encourages them to take their future into their own hands and make their voices heard.
Inside, the album contains important collaborations with Noel Gallagher, Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull), Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the Royal Albert Hall College Orchestra. On September 30, 2017, “Cane sciolto”, published by Chinaski Edizioni, is released in bookstores: a novel written together with writer Federico Scarioni, which tells the intense biography of Omar, made up of courage, counter-trend choices and difficult moments. The preface is written by Manuel Agnelli (Afterhours).
In 2018, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of ``Viaggio senza vento``, Omar Pedrini undertakes to remaster the entire album from the original tapes, from which the unreleased track Angel is also recovered, whose instrumental base was recorded in 1993, but was brought ended only in April of the following year when, on hearing the news of Kurt Cobain's death, Omar wrote the text straight away to complete and record the piece. On 12 October 2018 Angel is on radio rotation and available on all digital platforms. On October 26, 2018, ``Viaggio senza vento - 25 ° Anniversario`` is released for Universal Music, published in three versions: double CD, double LP (for the first time on vinyl) and Box Set (containing the double CD, double yellow LP, a posters and an exclusive 56-page book with unpublished photos and testimonies of the five members of the band, Mauro Pagani and Eugenio Finardi); these three versions of the reissue of Timoria's historic concept album contain, in addition to the 21 tracks already known to the public, also the unreleased Angel, the cover of I Can't Explain (The Who) and the demo versions of 11 songs from the album.
At the end of 2018, Omar Pedrini publishes his autobiographical book ``Rebel Angel``, published by La nave di Teseo, presented for the first time to the public on 7 December 2018 in Bologna. Omar Pedrini entrusts to these pages the story of all that music has given him: encounters, songs, occasions and places that have questioned his life, saving it, between revolutions, precipices and turning points. The rocker from Brescia decides to talk about himself, and he does so by composing a book that seems almost the film of his life, or his very personal concept album, and gives us the image of a man and an artist who, from the peasant world to the rock concerts, from cinema to the Sanremo Festival, live life savoring every moment of it, until the end.
Between 2018 and 2019, together with Alessio Boni, Omar Pedrini stages a song theater show entitled ``66/67``, or the respective years of birth of the two artists, but also a reference to the glorious two-year period during which rock music produced some of the songs and artists destined to influence all subsequent history. The tour of 15 dates, of which 3 in Milan, all sold-out, is a resounding success that occasionally leads them to resume the show even in the following years.
In 2019 Omar Pedrini brings the album ``Viaggio senza vento`` back on tour, performing it in full version with his band. The tour, called ``Viaggio senza vento (e dintorni)``, extends for 10 months with 48 concerts around Italy. The last spectacular date of the tour, held on 2 December at the Fabrique in Milan, is an extraordinary happening with many guests on stage, including Eugenio Finardi and Mauro Pagani (who participated in the realization of the Timoria album), ENSI, Nicolai Lilin , Matteo Guarnaccia, Federico Scarioni, Francesco Sarcina and Alessandro Deidda from “Le Vibrazioni”, Enrico Ghedi (member of Timoria) and many others.
In 2020 Omar Pedrini takes care of the reissue of the album `` 2020 SpeedBall '' on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the historic prophetic Timoria album. The reissue on double CD and double yellow vinyl of 180gr. also includes 11 live songs recorded during the concert at the Rolling Stone in Milan on December 18, 1995, the final date of the “Senza Far Rumore Tour”. The reissue was released on 3 July 2020, preceded by the vinyl picture of ``2020 SpeedBall`` released on 26 June 2020.
2021 brings new satisfactions to Omar. While his never-ending tour continues, the vinyl of “Viaggio Senza Vento” is also released, which enters directly into the Top 10 of the best sellers and at the end of the year the photographic book “Dentro un viaggio senza vento” (and Il Castello). In the same period the docu-film “Lawrence” was presented, directed by Giada Diano and Elisa Polimeni, dedicated to the giant of American culture and literature, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. In the soundtrack we find “Desperation Horse”, the song composed by Omar on the poetic text by Ferlinghetti himself, published on the album ``Come se non ci fosse un domani`` in 2017.