Gianmaria Testa

Gianmaria Testa’s smoky tones and low-key but devastating way with a song have won him a devoted, largely word-of-mouth following in Western Europe. His Le Chant du Monde CD Da questa parte del mare (“on these shores”) won Italy’s prestigious Targa Tenco as the best album of 2007 — remarkable, given the concept album’s stance of solidarity with immigrants, a bold, against-the-grain position in increasingly neofascist Italy. Testa’s latest release is a reissue of 1999’s haunting, lunar Lampo, whose tango-flecked title cut dances on the edge of the abyss, telling of life that is “right now — the flash of a photograph— it dazzles your eyes, you seek it, and it’s gone.”