Mar 19, 2022

Who is Gianluca Zanna, CEO of Zanna Records?

Updated: Dec 4

Gianluca Zanna, Songwriter, Music Producer, CEO of Zanna Records

Gianluca Zanna’s own musical journey began in Italy, where he was born in Rome. After what was in many respects an idyllic early childhood near the sea, listening to his grandfather’s serenades, soaking in the cinematic epic musical scores and fantasy in his family’s movie theatre, he went to a much more sterile and even harsh environment–boarding school. From the young age of 10, he grew up in the Italian National Boarding School “Convitto Nazionale,” and then through the elite Military Academy Nunziatella, the oldest Military School in the world. During his Convitto Nazionale boarding school experience, Gianluca discovered the magic of music–he could fly away to another universe. From that point on, instead of playing soccer, he wrote songs–both lyrics and melody. He serendipitously found some old instruments in the attic of the school, and using them, he taught himself how to play a bit of guitar, bass and drum. At that same time, as a young teenager, Gianluca studied Ancient Latin and Ancient Greek, where he discovered a love for the great Italian poets of the classical past, like Ovid, Catullus, and Petrarch, leading to Dante and then D’Annunzio; he admired their ability to transmit feelings and pictures in a few brief phrases as a way to fight for what they believed in whether it be love, freedom, or another of their humanist values. Every spare moment, inspired, he found happiness writing his own poetry in a special little notebook, filling it with what became lyrics to his songs.

When Luca grew up in Italy in boarding schools and he was dreaming to become a songwriter and emigrate to America, he was listening to the work of Brian Reeves, a world-famous record producer and sound engineer among his credits Donna Summer, Giorgio Moroder, Billy Idol, U2, Simple Minds. Today Brian Reeves is working actively on Zanna's songs and so far has mixed some of his latest songs like “I Want to Know”, “Storm”, “I AM” and “The Other Side of my Heart Remix”.