Exclusive Premiere: Nicola Conte & Gianluca Petrella - Hold On To Your Dreams (feat. Debo Ray)

We have the great pleasure to host the exclusive world premiere of Nicola Conte & Gianluca Petrella's new single Hold On To Your Dreams, featuring Debo Ray on vocal. The song is from their forthcoming brand new album People Need People.

The opening track of the new album is a slow tempo ballad with a smooth and mellow vocal of Debo Ray singing a positive and uplifting message to "hold to your dreams". It's a really dreamy song, but in a good way, with a soft trumpet solo and delicate vibraphone sound in the background. The rhythm section keeps the tempo with the little subtle echo of some cosmic noises, turning the song slowly into more typical for this band's nu-jazz direction.

Italian musicians and jazz revivalists Nicola Conte & Gianluca Petrella are back on Schema Records with a new album, the first in sixteen years. This is how many years left since the release of groundbreaking New Standards. Since the beginning of their collaboration, Conte and Petrella’s goal was to maintain an open concept of sound influenced by a wide-ranging taste in music and their ability to realize collaborative conceptions with a mindful array of artists. For the most part recorded in Puglia, Italy, People Need People is the result of a constantly evolving research and artistic exchange, that has been able to cross borders during its development.

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Listen below to exclusive world premiere of Nicola Conte & Gianluca Petrella's new single Hold On To Your Dreams, featuring Debo Ray:

Sonically the project is conceived as a collective creative experience drawing on Conte & Petrella’s early influences from soul, spiritual Afro-jazz, and research on modern electronic sounds, disco and hip-hop, the album’s 11 tracks feature a cosmopolitan ensemble of musicians including MC/poet Raashan Ahmad (USA), pianist & composer Nduduzo Makhathini (South Africa), multi-instrumentalist & composer Magnus Lindgren (Sweden), singer & educator Débo Ray (USA), singer, vocalist & songwriter Bridgette Amofah (Ghana/ England), percussionist Abdissa Assefa (Ethiopia/Finland), drummer & composer Teppo Mäkynen (Finland), vibraphonist Pasquale Mirra (Italy), percussionist & drummer Simone Padovani (Italy), and Italian rising stars such as singer & producer Davide Shorty, pianist & singer Carolina Bubbico, drummer & producer Tommaso Cappellato, pianist Seby Burgio, trumpeter Mirco Rubegni, and saxophonist Pasquale Calò.

Watch below a video of Nicola Conte & Gianluca Petrella's title track from the forthcoming album People Need People, featuring Davide Shorty & Carolina Bubbico::