Sicily Revisited is Laura Campisi's deeply personal journey back to her musical roots. Born in 2014 from her lifelong connection to Sicilian music and shaped by her years as a jazz musician between Italy and New York, the project brings the island of Sicily into conversation with another island that transformed her life: Manhattan.
The repertoire draws from traditional Sicilian music and beyond: lullabies, love songs, work and prison songs, nineteenth-century romances, and works by influential Sicilian songwriters and poets. Rather than using jazz to polish the rough edges of folk music, Sicily Revisited embraces them, searching for the instinctive, visceral qualities shared by both traditions. Jazz, improvisation and contemporary influences become tools for rediscovery, allowing old melodies and stories to inhabit a new musical landscape without losing the character that made them powerful in the first place.
At the heart of the project are stories of a Sicily marked by contradiction: tenderness and harshness, beauty and struggle, deep roots and restless departures. The music can be intimate and delicate or raw and fiery, following the emotional contours of those stories through arrangements built around interplay, listening and simplicity. Sicily Revisited is both a return to Campisi's roots and a contemporary reimagining of them. A bridge between Palermo and New York, it looks backward without being bound by the past, following the red thread that connects memory, distance and belonging: love.
About Laura Campisi
Sicilian-born vocalist and songwriter Laura Campisi has made New York City her home since 2011. Rooted in jazz but instinctively drawn to crossing musical and cultural borders, her work brings together jazz, Italian and Sicilian music, folk traditions, original songwriting and unexpected reinterpretations of familiar songs, moving freely across musical genres.
Language, place and cultural identity are central to Campisi’s musical world. She writes and performs in various languages as a way to play with different colors and sounds. Her work continues to move between the inspirations that have shaped her: Sicily and New York, tradition and improvisation, memory and reinvention. Rather than treating those worlds as separate, she looks for the spaces where they overlap — and for the stories that can only emerge when they meet.
Sicily Revisited Videos
Enjoy this selection of performances bringing the soul of Sicily to life, intertwined with the sounds of New York City!
