Impressions from Grace is a collection of 12 simple pieces that came to life at a very special moment in my life: the moment I became a father for the first time. On the 29th of November 2022, my daughter Beatrice was born, and she came into this world with a few issues that made her journey a bit harder than usual. She had to spend the first few weeks of her life in the Grace Centre for newborn intensive care, at the Sydney Children’s Hospital at Westmead (Australia), first to wait for and then to recover from the long open-heart surgery she underwent when she was 8 days old.

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During those weeks, to keep her company and help her through annoying breathing devices, beeping medications dispensers, buzzing lights, cannulas and tubes everywhere, chattering people, crying patients, loud nurses, and bothering doctors always poking, stitching, testing, checking, inspecting her, I did the one thing I did know how to do: I played my guitar for her... because as far as parenting goes, I knew then even less than the little I know now. 

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For her, and for the nurses and kids that shared the room with her and us, I played a lot of classical music, from Bach (a lot of Bach!) to Sor, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Tansman, Assad, Barrios, and a few more. Then one day my iPad ran out of battery, and I ran out of pieces I could play by memory, so I started to improvise. Fragments, at first, a melody, a sequence of chords, and then a little tune came out of thin air. Incidentally, my wife Minie had her phone close by and she recorded it, and she kept recording day after day, every time she heard something she liked. 

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The first of those moments even ended up on Facebook, and now it is included here, with the number 6... along with the other extemporary musical inventions (Impromptus) that I played for my little Beatrice to describe, comment, or underline a few meaningful episodes of her early life. 

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The reason why I decided to publish these pieces, though, goes a little further. On the 22nd of December Beatrice was diagnosed with Kabuki Syndrome. The name comes from the Japanese word 歌舞伎, かぶき, which means “sing, perform, skills” and refers to the famous traditional theatrical form characterized by heavily caricatured makeup to emphasize the traits of the characters. Kabuki Syndrome is a rare genetic condition that changed her expectations from an extensive recovery to a life-long journey where each step may be a little more complicated and hard than usual. Being a rare syndrome, there is still little research about it; as I write these notes, we know it affects one in 32,000 newborns, it can have involve a range of organs and attributes, and has only been known for the last 40 years, which means that there is not so much awareness, knowledge, and resources around it. 

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As soon as I started processing the news, I realised that I could use these simple pieces to promote awareness about Kabuki Syndrome. So, if you managed to read up to this point, here is the real meaning of my message to you: this is not only to thank you for your interest in my music but most importantly to thank you for being part of this journey.