Allison Scola, Performing Songwriter and Musician

I am a singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. I sing and play clarinet, piano, guitar, Italian frame drums and some percussion. 

I have been a performing songwriter for more than twenty years. My base is New York City, yet I've toured throughout the United States. My work as a solo artist and with Allison Scola Project can be best sampled through my album, A Braver Kind, that was released in 2008 and can be purchased at music outlets listed below. See below for more on my duo with guitarist Joe Ravo, Villa Palagonia. 

Listen at Discography

Allison Scola | Official Music Bio

After months of working 12 -14 hour days at a top New York advertising agency, songwriter and singer Allison Scola realized that she had missed her true destination by just a few hundred yards: That moment was when she discovered that day in and day out on her way to the office, she had been walking right past the Brill Building, the songwriting headquarters of the 1940s to 1970s. Within hours she quit her job, and since has thrown herself into crafting songs and performing. 

Allison’s dedication and talent shows – her 2004 Song Sampler received rave reviews from CollectedSounds.com and Musesmuse.com and landed her a place in the national Chick Singer Night showcase, the On Stage Italian American Artists showcase, and the Songwriters Hall of Fame New Writers showcase. In addition, her song “Something Better Waiting” reaped a Finalist Position in the 2005 Hank Williams Songwriting Contest, and “Risking a Fall” won her a 3rd Place prize in the 2005 SolarFest Singer-Songwriter Competition. 

In 2006, Scola performed in New York’s Columbus Day Parade, and in 2007 she wooed audiences during her Italian Day pre-game performance at the New York Met’s Shea Stadium and Staten Island Yankees Stadium. In the summer of 2007, her band, Allison Scola Project, was voted a finalist in the CBS News Early Show “Living Room Live! Battle of the Bands Contest.” 

Scola creates songs that weave hues of her Italian heritage and fascination with Mediterranean folk culture together with personal accounts of her experience as a modern American artist taking risks in love and life. Her 2008 album, A Braver Kind, produced by Janie Barnett and engineered and mixed by Jon Gordon, illustrates her power as a songwriter and musician–as confirmed by an Honorable Mention Award in the 2009 Billboard Magazine World Song Competition for her song “My Naked Heart.” 

Scola performed alongside her colleagues in Chicks with Dip, a New York City women’s songwriting collective, a group of which she is a founding member, in Joni Mitchell’s Blue: A 40th Anniversary Celebration. Together with pianist Anna Dagmar, she performed “This Flight Tonight.” Chicks with Dip’s recording of Joni Mitchell’s landmark album was named as a Best of 2012 Top Ten Albums by WFUV’s John Platt. The songwriting collective performed Blue at numerous venues throughout the northeast and beyond. 

In 2013, Scola formed Villa Palagonia with guitarist Joe Ravo. Named for the world-famous, historic palace in Bagheria, Sicily, Villa Palagonia performs eclectic acoustic pop infused with Mediterranean folk–combining the sounds of Scola and Ravo’s American roots with their southern Italian heritages. 

With a voice that’s been described by Music-Reviewer.com as “comforting and all-embracing, like being in the presence of your long lost best friend,” Allison transports listeners to a world where hearts are bursting and dreams come true.

Villa Palagonia

Eclectic acoustic brushed with hues from Mediterranean folk is the avenue on which the band Villa Palagonia perches—yet the side streets and dusty alleyways that these musicians travel offer engaging timbres that are woven together by songs imparting tales of the old world and the new. 

Founded in 2013 by multifaceted guitarist Joe Ravo and multi-instrumentalist and singer Allison Scola, Villa Palagonia calls upon its members’ southern Italian roots and American know-how to create original music peppered with elements from traditional Sicilian and Italian folk songs. Joe Ravo is a versatile guitarist who has performed alongside the likes of Dave Brubeck and Stanley Turrentine and traveled around the world as a cultural ambassador for the U.S. Department of State. Allison Scola is most familiar to folk audiences because of her performance as part of Chicks with Dip’s Joni Mitchell’s Blue Celebration. As a solo artist, she has performed at venues as grand as Shea Stadium, as kitschy as CBS Morning News’ Living Room Live, and as intimate as her cousin’s patio in Bagheria, Sicily where the world-renowned chateau Villa Palagonia exists. 

Allison’s paternal grandmother, who immigrated to New York in the 1920s, grew up in Bagheria in the shadow of Villa Palagonia. It’s a place she and Joe have visited many times; and the villa, a place that they find intriguing and inspirational because of the 72 odd and mystical monster-statues that line the estate’s grounds. Bagheria is at the crossroads—between barons and peasants, between lemon orchards and fig orchards, between mountains and sea, between Europe and Africa, and between ancient mysteries and modern realities. Both the historic site and the band capture a unique essence—capture a place: where north, south, east, west, and humanity collide.

Music, videos, and more at https://villa-palagonia.com/