After the announcement of the friendly split of RHAPSODY OF FIRE , the birth of the new LT’s RHAPSODY band and the announcement of the new album coming out in June 2012, Luca Turilli released his first official and exclusive interview to Markus Wosgien, Head of Promotion of the German record company Nuclear Blast. MW: Hi Luca, thank you for the interview and for your time. Here we go with my first question: after the official split of RHAPSODY OF FIRE a lot of rumors about the same split spread around the net. Do you want to tell or precise something about it? LT: Hi Markus, it’s a real pleasure for me to exchange some words with you and to give some information to our fans at the same time. First of all let me tell you that Alex (Staropoli) and I had a lot of fun while hearing some comments following the announcement of the friendly split of RHAPSODY OF FIRE. In particular I heard the comments of some people imagining a lot of weird things or thinking that I was the one who left the band because of this or that reason. Honestly this is really absurd and nothing is more untrue. The only reality is that in the end of 2010 Alex and I, together - and I underline: together -, agreed that after FROM CHAOS TO ETERNITY (the 10th official RHAPSODY OF FIRE album which closed the cycle of releases related with our saga), we would have went on with our careers separately. This because after 20 years of great and unique collaboration the feeling, while working together, was not the same anymore and so, due to the strong respect we have for each other, we decided to take this important decision. We also agreed everything about the way the band split and the fact of keeping for both the name RHAPSODY, in respect of all the unique efforts and the personal economical investment we both made in these years to make this name stronger and stronger in the market. So, again, all was decided really in a friendly way between two people respecting themselves at all levels. Therefore no conspiracy theories or something like that ha ha, instead just the honest will of proceeding separately in order to find new artistic stimulations. Be also sure that there won’t be any competition between the two RHAPSODY bands, we are too old for those kind of games ha ha. I love Alex and want for him the best possible success. I also take the chance of wishing the best to the new members of RHAPSODY OF FIRE: TOM HESS and ROBERTO DE MICHELI und OLIVER HOLZWARTH. They are great people and ultra-skilled musicians, a sure guarantee of great music at the highest artistic levels for all the fans of Alex and Fabio’s band! MW: Let’s speak about your new album. What can you tell us about it? LT: Honestly, this album is very important for me, Alex Holzwarth, Patrice and Dominique and personally it is the one I always dreamed to record. The basic composition process lasted around 5 months. In this period of time I worked at the rhythm of 12-14 hours per day and, while very hard because very demanding mentally and spiritually, this was one of the most rewarding sessions of composition of my whole life. It rarely happened I had so much fun playing the guitar, the keyboards or my beloved piano and creating original classical parts, cinematic interludes, orchestrations and all the rest. Now all the songs are ready and I am actually in the process of arranging everything. As you know I don’t hire external people to orchestrate the music but I do all by myself writing the music for each section of the orchestra, the choirs etc. and this sometimes can be a very long and hard process stealing a lot of time and energy ha ha. I can not deny that this is a very ambitious album because of the investment, artistic vision etc., and all the people working on it, NUCLEAR BLAST included, are thinking the same. That’s why in the upcoming months of intensive studio work I want to go on dedicating myself night and day to it, without thinking to anything el