Alice

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Alice

Alice ; born Carla Bissi on 26 SepteAlicember 1954), also known as Alice Visconti, is an Italian singer-songwriter and pianist, active since 1971. Alice had her breakthrough after winning the Sanremo Music Festival with the song "Per Elisa" in 1981, followed by European hit singles like "Una notte speciale", "Messaggio", "Chan-son Egocentrique", "Prospettiva Nevski" and "Nomadi" and albums like Gioielli rubati, Park Hotel, Elisir, and Il sole nella pioggia charting in Continental Europe, Scandinavia, and Japan.

In 1984, she represented Italy in the Eurovision Song Contest with "I treni di Tozeur", a duet with longtime collaborator Franco Battiato. In her more recent career Alice has explored a diverse range of musical genres including classical, jazz, electronica and ambient, and has collaborated with a large number of renowned English and American musicians. Her latest album Samsara was released in 2012.

Born in Forlì, Bissi started taking piano lessons in the local Conservatory and singing privately at the age of eight. Her career in music started as she as a seventeen-year-old won the 1971 Castrocaro Music Festival under her birth name Carla Bissi, with an interpretation of the song "Tanta voglia di lei", originally composed and recorded by classic Italian rock band Pooh.

The following year saw her winning another music award, La gondola d'argento in Venice, with the song "La festa mia" as well as making her debut in the important Sanremo Music Festival performing "Il mio cuore se ne va" in the Newcomers category, also released as her debut single, the song however failed to qualify for the finals. Two further singles on the Carosello label credited as Carla Bissi followed in 1972 and 1973, both faring relatively unnoticed by the Italian audiences.

In 1975 she quit her day job at a design studio and took the stage name Alice Visconti as she was signed by the Italian subsidiary of CBS Records and released her debut album La mia poca grande età. The album consisted of material written by some of Italy's most successful composers and lyricists of the era and among the musicians contributing were in fact members of Pooh. The singles "Piccola anima" and "Io voglio vivere", both in the fairly traditional Italian easy listening genre, became minor chart successes in late 1975 and early 1976, the latter also a modest hit in France.

A second album on CBS followed in late 1977, Cosa resta... Un fiore, recorded with the same team of producers, composers and musicians as the debut, including the singles "...E respiro" and "Un'isola" which also met with moderate commercial success.

After the comparatively low sales of albums Mélodie Passagère – Alice Canta Satie, Fauré & Ravel (1988) and Mezzogiorno Sulle Alpi (1992) the EMI label declined to release or even record the 1993/1994 project Art et Décoration with the Arturo Toscanini Symphony Orchestra. Instead they released a greatest hits compilation in 1994 entitled Il vento caldo dell'estate, taking its title from the artist's first Italian hit single and mainly focussing on material recorded in the early 1980s. The compilation was issued without the knowledge or approval of Bissi herself. The hits package included a Euro disco remix of the 1982 track "Chan-son Egocentrique", originally a duet with Franco Battiato. The remixed version of the track, also released as a 12" single, omitted all lines sung by the composer himself – again this was done without the knowledge or approval of either Bissi or Battiato. The two subsequently considered taking legal action against the label to have the compilation and the remix single withdrawn – only to find that they legally had no control over the use of their respective bodies of work recorded for EMI. This subsequently led to both artists leaving the label after a fifteen-year-long and highly successful collaboration.

Bissi's contract however stipulated that she was to deliver one final studio album to the label before the end of 1995. As a compromise she agreed to take part in the production of another hits compilation, this time under her supervision. Unlike the first version, Viaggiatrice solitaria covered tracks from all eras of her career on EMI, including selections from her then more recent works Mezzogiorno sulle Alpi and Il sole nella pioggia. The remix of "Chan-son Egocentrique" was omitted from the track list. Despite this, the 1994 collection – including the unapproved disco remix without Battiato's vocals – still remains in print, some fifteen years later.

After Bissi's parting ways with EMI, the label and its Dutch mid-price subsidiary Disky Communications have continued to capitalise on the rights to her back catalogue, issuing a large number of hits compilations in various price ranges under titles like I grandi successi di Alice, Collezione, Le signore della canzone, Made in Italy, Studio Collection, The Best of Alice, Collezione Italiana etc., again mainly including early 1980s hits. The year of 2006 alone saw EMI releasing no less than four of these best of packages in Continental Europe, Scandinavia and Japan.

Bissi's following five-year tenure on the Warner Music label has also resulted in the release of unapproved compilations. 2006 saw the label issuing a greatest hits package entitled Le Più Belle Canzoni Di Alice, paradoxically and confusingly exactly the same title as one of the four EMI compilations released the very same year, which includes seven tracks recorded for the CBS label in 1975 and 1977 coupled with some of her best-known 80s hits such as "Per Elisa", "Prospettiva Nevski" and "Nomadi", the latter are however not the original versions but re-recordings dating from the 2000 album Personal Jukebox, which the compilation fails to mention in its liner notes. 

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Alice - Il Giorno Dell 'indipendenza.mid

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Alice - Il Vento Caldo Delle State.mid

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Alice - Per Elisa.mid

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Alice - Estate.mid

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Alice - Il mio cuore se ne va.mid

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Alice - Nomadi.mid

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Alice - Prospettiva Nevski.mid

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Alice - Una notte speciale.mid
Alice - Una notte speciale MH.MID

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Alice - Gia ti guarda.mid