Prima Apollinaare grew up in a house with a piano she was not allowed to touch. Her mother was a singer and actress. Her father managed Italian television personalities and recording artists. Music was everywhere — except, apparently, for her. So she got a law degree instead.

Then, in 1997, she left Italy with $800, a three-month visa, and no particular plan beyond never going back. Los Angeles did what Los Angeles does — she bartended, sold clothes on Rodeo Drive, spent two weeks as an usher at the Greek Theatre before walking out because she couldn’t stand watching other people perform from the aisles. Eventually she found herself alone in a recording studio with a producer and said the sentence that changed everything: “I always wanted to sing and write music. Would you get together with me and do a song?” He said yes.That was the beginning. Since then she has released four projects, acted in Carnival Row and Mozart in the Jungle, rescued animals, and built an entire catalog without a label or a team behind her. Her new EP 23, out now, is the most personal thing she has made — four songs that go back to boarding school hallways, racetracks in Monza, and the particular kind of pain that only makes sense years after the fact.

Prima, your new EP is called 23, just four songs, arriving years after a childhood spent in a house where the piano itself was off limits to you. What does it feel like to release something this personal now, compared to the silence you grew up with around that instrument?

Liberating. I can finally write songs that allow me to be me.

“Didn’t Look Back,” from the new EP, returns to a long hallway at your boarding school and someone walking away without turning around. Was that memory sitting somewhere in you for years before this EP, or did it surface while you were already in the room writing?

It surfaced in the room. The producer asked me to share a painful memory from my childhood, and that has always been a sharp one for me.

You left Italy in 1997 with eight hundred dollars and a law degree you never used, and now 23 is being described as your most autobiographical work yet. Which version of that twenty-three-year-old who landed in Los Angeles do you recognize most in these four songs?

“Automobile,” for sure.

“Automobile” pulls from being taken to the racetrack by your father as a child, speed and danger and glamour blurring together. Of everything from those racetrack days, what was the first specific detail you pulled out when you sat down to actually write that song?

Ayrton Senna. I met him with my dad in Monza. I’ll never forget him, one of a kind. And Neffa, a great singer-songwriter from Italy and a friend of mine. Both of them winners.

You once followed Whitney Houston’s limousine through the fog on a Vespa just to tell her you loved her, and she rolled down the window and blew you a kiss. Does any part of that night live inside the new EP, even somewhere no listener would think to look?

Not inside the EP, but definitely inside me. I mean, not every day you get to meet Ms. Houston and have her tell you, “I love you,” and blow you a kiss. As for the listeners: don’t give up your dreams.

You quit your job as an usher at the Greek Theatre after two weeks because standing in the aisles with a flashlight felt unbearable. Releasing 23 entirely on your own terms, does that stage still cross your mind when you think about how far that distance actually was?

That stage still crosses my mind because one day I will be playing all my songs on it with a sold-out show. It’s a goal I am pursuing relentlessly.

No team of ten people wrote these songs with you, just a producer and a room, the same way you have always worked. Was there a moment while making 23 where a song went somewhere you had not planned for it to go?

The songs on 23 came out perfectly, and I am happy as ever. I didn’t have any hesitation or second thoughts. I got into the studio with clear eyes and a full heart.

Alignment in 2023 dealt in perseverance, 22 in 2024 expanded that into a fuller statement, and now 23 arrives sharper and more autobiographical. What is one line on this EP you would not have been able to write two years ago?

All of it, because two years ago I wasn’t where I am today. Today, I know where I stand, what I want, and most of all, who I am.

A llama named Gigi, a python named Charlie, a chimpanzee named Rose, all part of your childhood through your mother’s connection to the Milan Zoo. Is there a song on 23, even one that has nothing to do with animals, where that same instinct toward them still shows up?

“Amazon,” “I Am the Queen of the Jungle.” I am better around animals than around humans. I am way more connected with animals than with human beings.

Opening a free music school for children who cannot afford lessons is the exact opposite of the house you grew up in, where the piano sat behind a door you were not allowed to open. Has anyone already come to you, even informally, asking to be part of that school before it exists?

No, because unfortunately I am not at the level where people know my intentions yet. But when I start making money through my music, I’ll open a school as big as Yankee Stadium and invite anyone who wants to LEARN MUSIC, not only children. And if you can, please pass a message to Dolly Parton: Miss Parton, please donate some of your money to this project. I know you got a check for $100 million not too long ago.

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