New York, NY (Top40 Charts) After penning chart-topping hits for superstar artists like Miley Cyrus, The Weeknd, and
Celine Dion, Oscar-nominated and Grammy-nominated songwriter and producer Stephan Moccio has announced a joyous return to his roots on the piano. One of the most compelling writers in music today, Moccio possesses a rare power to express incredibly complex and nuanced emotions through melody alone, establishing himself as a handcrafting melodist with a "rare gift of delivering emotionally charged tales of love, loss and hope without words" (Billboard). In a musical career that's included seven hits on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart, three Grammy nominations and an Oscar nod for co-writing The Weeknd's seven-times-platinum "Earned It," the classically trained virtuoso has announced his most extraordinary work to date. Due out October 15th on Decca Records, Lionheart affirms Moccio as a truly singular force who's redefining the possibilities of piano music, adding an entirely new urgency to the time-honored genre.
Following Tales of Solace, his acclaimed 2020 release, Moccio's forthcoming album continues the intensely intimate narrative that has already earned him nearly 400 million streams on his solo work. After dealing with painful - yet necessary and cathartic - changes in his life, Moccio took to the piano to heal, spending hours and days in his Laurel Canyon home simply improvising. The result is Lionheart: 14 elegantly-arranged tracks that reveal a breathtaking sense of rebirth and renewal as Moccio brings the timeless aesthetic of the solo piano into the modern musical landscape. "If you look up the meaning of 'lionhearted,' it means having bravery and determination," says Moccio. "I've gotten to the point in my life where I don't really worry about other people's opinions, and it felt right to name the album for the sort of courage that we all want to feel."
With the announcement, Moccio has shared "Le Jardin de Monsieur Monet," a dreamy pursuit of his most extravagant fascinations. True to its title, the track recalls the florid grandeur of Monet's "The Artist's Garden at Giverny," his 1900 oil-on-canvas impressionistic work lush with irises.
Produced by Moccio and recorded in solitude at his home studio, Maison de Musique in Los Angeles, Lionheart endlessly draws upon his eclectic background as a pop hitmaker while marking a return to his musical roots. Raised in the Niagara Falls region of Canada, Moccio took up piano at the young age of three and began writing his own compositions by age eleven before studying at the prestigious Royal Conservatory of Music. Lionheart is the sophisticated, masterful pinnacle of Moccio's ultra-vivid imagination and musicianship, a collection where each of the fourteen tracks radiates with vibrant color and unexpected texture. Although it might be surprising that the songwriter behind so many of today's massive hits is at his core a classically trained pianist, Lionheart is the purest manifestation of Moccio's musical vision and self-expression to date.
