Shakary was founded by Paolo 'Scandy' Scandella and Lele Hofmann in 1998.
In the year 2000 they published "Alya" (2CD); a concept album based on lyrics by Sandor Kwiatkowski, a Swiss multimedia artist known for his cover art works for Clepsydra. Among the musicians that played on that album, we have to name Aluisio Maggini on vocals from Clepsydra. The drums seat was assigned to Walter Calloni (Premiata Forneria Marconi (PFM).
In 2002 Shakary released the second album "The Last Summer". This album features almost the same musicians, with the exception of the vocals; the credits for those go to a certain Michael Branzino. This, however, was just an alias for Scandy as he didn't want people to know that he did the vocal tracks by himself.
In 2006 a double album was released ("Shakary 2006"), with re-recordings of a selection of songs from the first two albums. This time on vocals we'll hear Noel McCalla (known as long-time lead voice of Manfred Mann's Earth Band, and for his unforgettable vocal tracks on Mike Rutherford's Smallcreeps Day). Another highlight is the presence of Steve Rothery (Marillion) and Arjen Lucassen (Ayreon) performing a guitar solo on the same track. This was not planned, but happened because 'Scandy' sent the wrong song material to Steve.
Paolo 'Scandy' Scandella died in his home in southern Switzerland
on December 7th, 2012 of heart disease. When he left us, he was
working on new songs with enough new material for another album...
