Alessandro Giangola, Hamptons local and New York native, has been playing music ever since he was young. He has finally “jumped in with two feet,” as he puts it and is playing exactly the type of music he wants—songs with messages that uplift all those who listen. He has several shows lined up on the East End this summer and invites everyone to come out and be part of his journey.
Alessandro considers himself a singer/songwriter first, though he expresses that it’s difficult to categorize his music into one genre. He also pulls influence from pop, indie rock, and he is working on some newer music that leans more toward rock. A lot of what he does is solo acoustic with a looping pedal, and when he plays live shows it’s all original music. He has recorded and released several singles over the last few months with many more in the works!
He started taking guitar lessons when he was younger and mentioned how much he loved listening to the instructor play. “He was actually trying to teach me way too complicated of things for a beginner, but it was so cool because we went right to real music,” Alessandro says. He played guitar sporadically throughout high school after that, making improvements, but at the end of high school he and a friend went on a road trip and brought two guitars along. “We traveled all over the country for that whole summer and just learned every song we could off the recordings. One person would be driving and fast-forwarding and rewinding the songs, and the other would be in the passenger seat playing, and I just felt this immense freedom being out of high school, free and on the road playing music,” he says, “When I got back from that road trip and went to college, I just really wanted to learn more about music and felt ready. I started to play in college bands and that’s when I really realized I could actually do this and perform.”
When he first got into playing music he loved playing blues, funk, reggae, and a little bit of jazz. This was partly due to both his parents’ influences. He’d listen to opera and big band jazz with his father, and reggae, blues, and classical music with his mother from a young age. His sound has greatly evolved over the years, especially because he did not initially start out singing his own songs. “It wasn’t until I started writing songs that I started singing too,” Alessandro notes, “I would have other singers sing the songs I wrote, and I’d sing it to them first, but then after a while I decided I’d just sing it myself because I’d hear it a different way and they were my words and my thoughts.” He dove into writing more and more music from then on.
“Writing and playing music is like a therapy to me,” Alessandro says. “A lot of times I’ll write songs from a certain emotion I have in that moment and see what comes out in that feeling.” He spoke a lot about how he believes we are our thoughts and that changing his mindset has been instrumental in the recent developments he’s made as a musician.
“I like listening to mindset things,” Alessandro says. “So if I hear a mindset thing that I want to remember that lifts me out of a gloom, almost like sing affirmations that help me get over a mountain to the other side I’ll write a song about that.” He went on to describe his own mindset journey, noting, “Just a few months ago, I was working on my mindset and became aware of things I was thinking habitually. I realized with music I never really jumped in with two feet because I had so many limiting beliefs. And I started changing my thoughts and programmed myself to believe that what I was doing was positive and that people would want to hear my music. Then I started to get feedback from people that they liked what I was doing, and I chose to believe it. That’s really the only reason I have made this transition within the last six months or so, and more opportunities have been coming.”
He says that anyone that comes out to his shows can always expect original music. He cultivated his own unique sound by “spending a lot of time not trying to copy other people,” as he put it. He went on to describe how he leans very hard into how he feels when creating music and pays attention to the message that wants to come out. “Listening to music is a big influence,” he says. “I can hear something I like and then play it by ear on the guitar or vocally, and if it’s something that’s part of me I kind of take it in, but it’s never verbatim. Your soul kind of reinterprets it and changes it and it doesn’t come out the same at all.”
Alessandro says that he can be a bit off-the-cuff when he performs. He loves combining his positive messages with simply having fun, and people can always expect his songs to be catchy and upbeat. “I might extend a song; I might start looping something or go into a guitar solo or vocal spoken word. I do a lot of improvisation. I’m an engaging performer, like sometimes I’ll talk to random people in the crowd,” he says with a laugh. “I like to be spontaneous. So, people can expect to have a good time but also hopefully leave feeling uplifted by the helpful and healing messages in my songs.”
When asked what it means to him to be able to perform live and express himself through his music, Alessandro said, “It’s literally the only thing I want to do. Music is almost like hypnosis, there’s a rhythm and feeling, and you’re taking people on a journey, and I tend to lean more toward uplifting people. I have a platform and opportunity to say how I feel about these different things and get these positive messages across. It almost feels like a mission to be able to do that.”
His next step in the music world is clear: to be bigger and better all the time. He says he will be, “Upping everything. Playing more, getting more people to the shows, recording more music, and working with more producers and engineers—just continuing to take chances.” He mentioned that he plans to say “yes” to the opportunities that come up and envision more and more opportunities. “I just want to play as many places as possible and share these songs as much as possible.”
Alessandro is doing things exactly the way he always dreamed, and he believes that he is doing something different than what’s happening out here. He feels that he is being completely himself musically for the first time in his life and knows that it’s due to changing his outlook on what’s possible for him.
He concluded with an important message, “It feels like there’s somewhat of an urgency for people like myself that need to be uplifted. Our minds are so powerful, and thoughts become things. If we all hold negativity in our minds, we’re projecting that into our future. There needs to be people delivering messages of a future that isn’t even here yet.” He paused before saying, “It’s almost like the song ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon. For that brief moment when you hear that song, you’re imagining a better, safer, more inclusive world, and that song is so crucial and powerful because of that. It’s important that there are musicians out there who are consciously creating thoughts and messages for people to ingest something that projects a future different than where it sometimes seems to be headed. And I feel a really strong purpose to be a contrast of any negativity.” Some of Alessandro’s newer songs address these very ideas—envisioning an image of a world that we all can step into.
Alessandro Giangola will be playing this Friday, June 16th at the Chequit on Shelter Island from 9:00 p.m. to midnight, and again on Friday, June 30th with more dates to follow throughout the summer. He can also be found playing in the garden at Kidd Squid Brewing Company in Sag Harbor this Saturday, June 17th from 5:00-8:00 p.m. For those on the North Fork, he’ll have a few shows lined up at Eastern Front Brewing in Mattituck. Plus, he is even available for private events across the East End. Stay tuned for everything to come from Alessandro, and check out his Instagram or Linktree for new music releases, shows, and added dates.
