Luca Turilli

Luca Turilli (Trieste Italy, March 5, 1972) is an Italian composer, arranger, record producer and multi-instrumentalist, involved in multiple musical projects. Luca plays, flute, piano and guitar.

Having always declared his love for music in all its aspects, Luca has dedicated himself to many musical genres, ranging from Dance, Trance and Electronic music of his first compositions to Symphonic and Film score inspired by the world of soundtracks up to the most recent and modern Pop/Rock and solo piano compositions of his current productions. From a young age he was interested in Classical music. At 16 he began studying guitar and at 22 he started learning the piano.

In 1990 he met Alessandro "Alex" Staropoli with whom three years later he founded the Symphonic power metal band Thundercross (of which he was also the singer before Cristiano Adacher), which later took the name Rhapsody and later, from 2006, Rhapsody of Fire, of which he was the guitarist and co-composer/producer together with keyboardist Alex Staropoli from 1997 until 2011. In 1999 he left his native country to move across the Alps, to Lyon, after meeting his current French partner Nadia. She was often a 'special guest' on stage during Rhapsody's live dates and where he lived for about three years. He later returned to Trieste, where he bought a house and where he still lives with Nadia.

As a soloist he has released several albums: the first, King of the Nordic Twilight, was released, in 1999, obtaining excellent acclaim from the public and critics, followed three years later by Prophet of the Last Eclipse and in 2006 his third solo album entitled The Infinite Wonders of Creation was released. At the same time as the albums, the single "The Ancient Forest of Elves" (1999) and the ep, Demonheart (2002) were released. All his albums have entered the main European charts and with Rhapsody he has sold more than a million copies.

2006 is also the year of the first release for his new band, Luca Turilli's Dreamquest , with the album "Lost Horizons". In this new band Luca makes himself known as an eclectic composer (presenting a genre of music between electronic pop and symphonic electro-metal, sung by the mysterious soprano Mystique, For years it was unknown who Mystique was, many years later it came out that the person behind Mystique was none other than Bridget Vogle, an American singer, who had emigrated to Germany)

In late 2008, he created an online guitar course called "Luca Turilli's Neoclassical Revelation". The course is named after his neoclassical guitar style.

In August 2011, some time after releasing the last album related to the heroic-fantasy saga on which all the lyrics and music of Rhapsody of Fire were based up to that point, Luca Turilli and Alex Staropoli decided to end their collaboration and proceed with an amicable divorce. Alex agreed to continue as Rhapsody of Fire and Luca with Luca Turilli's Rhapsody,

adding his name above the logo due to copyright reasons and old legal issues. In 2015, after the debut album Ascending to Infinity, Nuclear Blast released what was defined by Luca as one of the most important albums of his career: Prometheus, Symphonia Ignis Divinus. That album was the first ever to be mixed in Dolby Atmos and the music from it was used by Dolby and Yamaha to promote the Dolby Atmos technology worldwide.

From November 2016 to March 2018, Luca, along with his former bandmates Fabio Lione and Alex Holzwarth, who had also left Rhapsody of Fire in the meantime, celebrated the twentieth anniversary of Rhapsody's second album Symphony of Enchanted Lands with the 20th anniversary farewell tour, as Rhapsody Reunion, that saw them play all over the world. Due to the success of this tour and the associated pressure from promoters and fans, Luca Turilli and Fabio Lione felt almost obligated to continue.

In December 2018, it was announced that Luca Turilli, Fabio Lione, and former members of Rhapsody of Fire, Patrice Guers, Dominique Leurquin, and Alex Holzwarth would reunite to record new material under the name Turilli / Lione Rhapsody,

stressing in the press that after the farewell tour they would only agree to continue as Rhapsody if the new band brought something truly innovative to the table compared to the early sound.

While Fabio was still touring with Angra, Luca locked himself in his studio for 3 months to compose the new album, and at the end of December 2018, they entered the studio to record their new band's debut album Zero Gravity (Rebirth and Evolution), which was released on July 5, 2019

A new album was then created, closer to the current musical tastes of Luca and Fabio and influenced by a modern sound and also by bands like Queen and Dream Theater. As in the case of the albums under the Luca Turilli's Rhapsody label, the lyrics talk about science, metaphysics, psychology, anthropology and are generally linked to the mysteries of life - Luca Turilli's greatest passion since always and especially after what he began to discover thanks to his yoga and meditation practices.

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.

In 2020 he works on the debut album of his new band which features a modern Pop/Rock sound in the style of some of his favorite artists such as Adele and bands like Muse and Imagine Dragons, enriched with electronic, ethnic music and all those modern and symphonic elements that are now a real trademark in his discography.

Furthermore, piano being his favourite instrument, he started working on his first album of "emotional piano", with solo piano pieces sometimes enriched by some orchestral and choral parts, in the tradition of artists such as Yann Tiersen, Ludovico Einaudi and Yiruma, some of the well-known piano composers of our time and a real inspiration for him, underlining once again his need for continuous artistic challenges and the necessity to express himself 360 degrees.

Turilli / Lione Rhapsody later disbanded in February 2023 following a final tour in Latin America, announcing that they would be "closing the chapter of their career for good".

Luca owns his own Home Private studio, to compose and arrange his music, Luca Turilli uses a template of over 7,000 tracks based on Cubase software. He uses a main computer based on a dual Intel Xeon processor and two additional "slave" PCs for a total of 256 GB of RAM. All the sounds of the template are located on a total of 8 SSDs. Vienna Ensemble Pro is the additional software that Luca uses so that Cubase can "communicate" with the sounds on the main PC and the two slaves.

Guitars: Luca Turilli uses custom "Luca Turilli" electric guitars made by French luthier Christophe Capelli. He has four (black, white, blue and red) that are part of the first series (Neoclassical Revelation Series) and three (black, white and red) that are part of the new series "Neoclassical revelation 2.0". Specifications: His new exclusive guitars feature a DiMarzio Tone Zone pickup in the bridge position and DiMarzio Air Norton in the neck position.

Luca Turilli has been influenced by guitarists such as Yngwie Malmsteen, Marty Friedman and especially Jason Becker who Luca considers the greatest ever, stating that his solo album Perpetual Burn and the two albums made with his band Cacophony, Speed Metal Symphony, and Go Off!, are the manual of neoclassical phrasing par excellence, albums which he says are still unrivaled today for harmonic progressions, inventiveness and genius.

His way of playing often includes a wide use of arpeggios (sweep picking) and phrases classically influenced by scales such as those relating to the Aeolian mode, Phrygian mode, Locrian mode, the Harmonic minor and the Melodic minor. In his latest albums he has also introduced new, more refined elements (whole tone and chromatic scales) and also and above all ethnic (Hirajoshi and pentatonic scales).

On the piano level, his main influences are Romantic pianists such as Frédéric Chopin and contemporary composers such as Ludovico Einaudi, Yann Tiersen, Yiruma, Hans Zimmer and Philip Glass.

Opera Choir: Sonja Pallasch, Heidrun Brockoff, Rosina Herrera-Sicilia, Ewald Bayerschmidt, Georg Mihalinov, Karl Heinz Kinsel, Jasinsky, Enrike Ochmann

Rannveig Sif Sigurdardottir - soprano voice (vocals in Autumn's Last Whisper)

Epic Choir: Thomas Rettke, Robert Hunecke-Rizzo, Cinzia Rizzo, Kirsten Metzing, Miro, Olaf Hayer

Matthias Brommann - first violin

Annette Berryman - flute

Bettina Jhrig - viola

Lord James David - narrator

Andre Matos (vocals in the other version of Demonheart)

Amanda Somerville (vocalizations in Zaephyr Skies' Theme)

Bridget Fogle – female lead vocals (Mystique)

Luca Turilli

Equipment

Inspiration and executive style

Albums

Other collaborations

Members

Additional musicians