For the first time on the stage of the Vittoriale Amphitheater for a single Italian date, Sunday 16 July
Andrew Hozier-Byrne, known as Hozier, was born in Bray in Ireland 33 years ago at the Tener-a-mente Festival.
Andrew Hozier-Byrne: childhood and education
Raised in a family of musicians and a music student at Trinity College Dublin (until his drive to write songs and share them with the world won out over his studies), Hozier has always cultivated a great passion for music: childhood listening and adolescence were dominated, he says, by his father’s record collection and in particular by the Chicago blues, Texas blues, and the Chess Records and Motown labels, later discovering jazz, but more importantly the Delta Blues – with that extraordinarily haunting sound – thanks to artists like Skip James, Blind Willie Johnson. Next came Pink Floyd, Nina Simone, Billie Holiday and the great influence of Tom Waits.
In October 2014 he released “Hozier”, the homonymous debut album containing the beautiful ‘Take Me To Church’, gold, platinum and diamond record in many countries. Soundtrack of a well-known commercial starring the basketball player LeBron James, the single, which became a hit, conquered everyone, earning the first places in the world charts: the song was nominated ‘Song Of The Year’ at the 2015 Grammy Awards, won ‘Song Of The Year’ at the 2015 Ivor Novello Awards and 2015 BBC Music Awards and ‘Top Rock Song’ at the 2015 Billboard Music Awards, where Hozier also won in the ‘Top Rock Artist’ category, as well as having sold over 3 million copies in the UK alone. ‘Take Me To Church’ is a song about sexuality, freedom and humanity. The text captures the fascinating mix of condemnation and provocation, sin and forgiveness that characterizes his approach to writing. This continuous contrast expressed by his words and music remains, over the years, the distinctive trait of an artist who, since the beginning, has very clear ideas.
Hozier’s talent is unanimously recognized both in his native Ireland and in the United States, where the debut album reached number two in the sales charts in just one week of its release. Between soul, blues and folk-rock with ‘indie-gospel’ veins, Hozier immediately defines his particular musical style.
In 2016 comes ‘Cherry Wine’, the single that became the soundtrack of the awareness campaign on domestic abuse problems around the world. The official video starred actress, with three Oscar nominations, Saoirse Ronan. Meanwhile the song ‘Better Love’, contained in her debut album, became the soundtrack of the Warner Bros adventure film ‘The Legend Of Tarzan’.
Three years later, in 2019, Hozier releases ‘Wasteland Baby!’ the second album a few months after ‘Nina Cried Power’, the EP which features the collaboration of the legendary soul / gospel singer Mavis Staples and the iconic musician Booker T Jones on organ. ‘Wasteland Baby!’ is an album inspired and influenced by contemporary political events where, between ‘rebel song’ and love songs, Hozier maintains a musical style that ranges from black music to soul to folk-pop. Among the songs contained, the track ‘Movement’ reaches over 21 million streams in just one month, becoming a fan favorite at concerts.
The return after four years of silence
After four years of silence, it is with a handwritten letter that Hozier announces ‘Eat Your Young’, the ep arriving on March 17, his birthday, the first of a series of publications that will culminate in the album scheduled for this summer. “The body of work will follow the journey of the past strange years, in a loose and playful path of nine circles. There is much I would like to share, but I feel it best to leave us here with my deepest and most sincere thanks for your support and the patience that my fans have brought this far” declares the artist. A series of publications will then see the light that will accompany the acclaimed artist for the first time on the stage of the Vittoriale Amphitheater for a single Italian date, Sunday 16 July.
Twelfth edition
Concluding in August 2022, the eleventh edition of the Vittoriale Festival Tener-a-mente, organized by Viola and Rita Costa of Ripens’arti, hosted over 23,000 spectators, 8 sold-out shows and an average capacity index of the theater which almost 100%, with artists of the caliber of Beck, Paolo Nutini, Jeff Beck and Johnny Depp, Diana Krall, Beth Hart, James Blunt, Fantastic Negrito and others, without forgetting the Italian presence of Caliber 35 with their homage to the Maestro Morricone, Manuel Agnelli, the public’s affection for Professor Roberto Vecchioni and the usual appointment with the poetry of Più Luce!
Now in its twelfth edition, Tener-a-mente is confirmed as one of the most anticipated events in the panorama of Italian summer festivals, hailed by Studio Aperto as one of the two most important Italian festivals, together with the Lucca Summer Festival, and counted by GQ Italy among the five best national festivals, alongside historical events such as Umbria Jazz and the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto.
With an artistic direction entrusted by the president of the Vittoriale degli Italiani Foundation, Giordano Bruno Guerri to Viola Costa (Ripens’arti), anticipation is growing for the 2023 edition of Tener-a-mente which, like every summer, will bring many of the greatest protagonists of Italian and international music in the magnificent Vittoriale Amphitheater, completed in 2020 according to the original design by Gabriele d’Annunzio and sumptuously clad in red Verona marble.