Every now and again, you are in a Tik-Tok vortex and you discover something truly worth sharing…
There’s a particular kind of pianist who doesn’t just play notes but seems to translate feeling directly onto the keys, bypassing language altogether. Francisco Casarotti is one of them. And for those of us who spend our time hunting down the artists quietly reshaping contemporary classical music, he’s exactly the kind of discovery that makes the search worthwhile.
It was a grey Montreal day, the kind with a harsh humid wind that envelopes you into a reality check of Summer-is-OVER. I was organizing my found treasures from the many shores of B.C and the Sunshine Coast, missing the dry sun scortching my East coast skin when I happened on this track: The Emerging Light. It was as though, in that instant, my soul had been translated into music. Every note carried me somewhere I had forgotten—filling me with a profound nostalgia, yet something even stronger: hope. Hope that the sun, like all beautiful things, was already on its way back…
Born in Argentina and now calling Montreal home, Casarotti arrived at composition without the conservatory path so many of his peers take. He’s entirely self-taught — a fact that, once you hear his work, becomes almost impossible to believe. There’s a structural intelligence to his pieces, a patience in how melodies unfold, that usually takes years of formal training to cultivate. Instead, Casarotti built his musical vocabulary the way many of the genre’s most compelling voices have: by listening, feeling, and following instinct rather than instruction.
That instinct places him in good company. Listeners will hear clear kinship with Ludovico Einaudi’s meditative repetition, Joep Beving’s stark intimacy, and Alexis Ffrench’s lyrical warmth. But Casarotti isn’t simply working in the shadow of those names, he’s part of the same lineage that made neoclassical piano one of the defining sounds of the streaming era: minimal, melodic, unhurried, and built for the quiet moments in a listener’s day rather than the loud ones. Each piece for me, is a melodic meditation.
And the numbers back up what the ear already tells you. Casarotti’s catalogue has crossed 10 million streams across platforms, with an engaged following of over 200,000 people who’ve found something to hold onto in his music. I have not discovered an untaped gem, but rather an artist who I feel needs the entire world’s attention. In 2025, that connection moved off the screen and into a room for the first time — his debut solo concert SOLD OUT, a milestone that speaks to how deeply this music resonates once people encounter it directly. For an artist without a label machine or a conservatory pedigree behind him, that kind of organic growth is rare, and it’s earned.
When watching Francisco Casarotti’s hands dance over the keys, we are reminded at how amazing it is to be a self-taught pianist. Photographer: Élie Meilleur.
What makes Casarotti worth watching closely, though, isn’t the streaming figures — it’s the why behind the music. He’s been candid about the fact that he turned to the piano because words often failed him. Composition became the outlet for thoughts and emotions he couldn’t otherwise articulate, and that origin story still shapes everything he makes. His pieces aren’t built to impress technically; they’re built to sit beside a listener during whatever they’re going through; peace, nostalgia, melancholy, comfort, hope, or sometimes all of it at once within a single piece.
Francisco Casarotti, found a way to share his innerworld translated through the piano. A rare and beautiful gift. Photographer: Pénélope Ducharme.
That emotional directness is, frankly, the hardest thing to fake in this genre. Neoclassical piano has become crowded with pastiche…simple triads and reverb-heavy production standing in for actual feeling. What separates Casarotti is the sense that every phrase is earned, that the simplicity is intentional rather than a shortcut. It’s music built on restraint, which is exactly why it hits.
He puts it more elegantly than any critic could: “When words fail, music speaks.” It’s a fitting mission statement for an artist whose entire catalogue functions as a kind of emotional translation — turning things too complicated or too painful or too quiet to say into something anyone can feel, regardless of language.
Montreal has long punched above its weight as a breeding ground for introspective, boundary-blurring composers, and Francisco Casarotti belongs firmly in that conversation. Whether you’re a longtime devotee of the Einaudi school or simply someone who wants music that knows how to sit with silence, Casarotti is an artist worth discovering now — before the room he’s playing in gets a lot bigger.
For those looking for a really good classical concert this month, check out LEGACY.
