Featured Nomad: Fabrizio Vivarelli

Meet Fabrizio Vivarelli, composer and musician from Rome, Italy.

Spend just a few minutes with Fabrizio and you’ll find his passion for music is obvious. Using music as a true means of artistic expression, he prefers to maintain creative freedom by not being bound by any one instrument or genre.

While he says the piano is “his instrument” and one that was calling him from the age of nine when he first asked his parents for lessons, he is now also a vocalist and plays keyboard, guitar, bass and drums. “I can play anything when I’m inspired,” he says. “I can even play this washing machine if I like the sound.”

His music ranges from classical to rock to fusion. He plays with a number of different bands and enjoys experimenting with frequency modulation to produce electronic music. Fabrizio has performed in many venues and cities, including being the opening act for punk rock icon Iggy Pop and his band The Stooges!

His creative tendencies extend from music into art and food. He is a talented painter and chef, and we have had the pleasure of eating some of his freshly made dishes filled with soul here in London where Fabrizio has recently started a new journey.

Read on to find out more about Fabrizio and his travels.

1. How long are you travelling for?
I don’t know. The situation is not so good in Italy right now. I have no particular plans at this stage. I have been in London for a couple of weeks now and I think there are more opportunities for me to pursue my work here.

2. How heavy was your baggage at last check-in?
Actually I just had a carry-on! But I sent a lot of boxes to London in advance – my keyboard and lots of smaller instruments for creating interesting sounds, plus plenty of my favourite Italian oil, cheese and pasta!

3. Apart from your passport, what item can you not travel without?
My keyboard. I am my music.

4. What was the first foreign country you ever travelled to?
I think it must have been Greece with my family when I was about 12 years old. We stayed there for a month. I remember a beautiful girl (laughs). She was my first love.

5. What has been your favourite destination to date?
This is a very hard question for a traveller! I would have to say Amsterdam. It’s such an intriguing city with so many colours. It’s fantastic! I only stayed for a week but I decided to get a tattoo there with three Chinese characters meaning “dreams, friendliness, emotion.” I hope to get another one soon!

6. Preferred accommodation: Hotel? Hostel? Randoms’ couch? Other?
I think a couch is best but I haven’t tried couchsurfing yet. I mostly stay in hostels because you get to meet very interesting people. Hotels are nice but I find them to be cold.

7. Given an unlimited budget, where would you most like to go?
Probably Tibet as I’ve always wanted to see it with my own eyes, or Iceland. I love the Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós. They are very spiritual. I’d like to go there just for the music.

8. What do you most like about travel?
I can discover myself and learn something new – about different cultures and their people. It’s a great inspiration for my music. Travel is like composing and music is a universal language for communication. Everybody understands this language.

9. What do you most dislike about travel?
I dislike travel for the same reasons! It makes you think about things that you sometimes don’t want to, internalize them, and that may mean you need to change direction. But I am not afraid. Take risks. Enjoy your life.

10. What is your most memorable travel experience?
The journey I am on now here in London. It’s like I’m travelling on multiple levels – there’s the physical travel, the mental travel and the journey I take every time I meet someone new. Everything is always a first. It’s like a beautiful, strange film. You’re the actor in your film, but you also hope to be the director. You spend your life on it.

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Interested in listening to some of Fabrizio’s music? You can find him on SoundCloud, YouTube and iTunes.

He is also “likeable” over on his Facebook page.