{:en}The Loano Prize, Italy's leading event for traditional music, returns July 23-27, 2018 to tell the story of the popular music of the future. Faithful to its vocation as a permanent laboratory on Italian traditional music, the Loano Prize is dedicated for 2018 to reGenerations, to document the liveliness of Italian traditional musics through generational transitions, those mechanisms that allow tradition to survive by innovating, modifying and contaminating itself with other musics and other cultures.
“The only prize in Italy dedicated to the best contemporary production of Italian traditional music, the National Prize City of Loano,” say Mayor Luigi Pignocca and Loano City Councilor for Tourism, Culture and Sports Remo Zaccaria, "has become a full-fledged part of the main cultural and tourism policy initiatives promoted by the Loano municipal administration. For five days, the heart of the city will be transformed into a big stage: people will be able to meet the winners of the fourteenth edition of the Prize, participate in meetings with artists and attend many concerts. The festival program will be itinerant and will touch several places in our beautiful Loano: Orto Maccagli and Giardini di Nassiriya on the waterfront, the summer arena Giardino del Principe and the charming cloister of St. Augustine. It will be an edition accompanied by significant novelties (the presence of a new and young artistic director and the birth of a Young Loano Prize) that look to the future of the Prize, the generational transition, and the willingness to reinvent itself.".
“Dealing with “tradition,”” says Jacopo Tomatis, the Prize's new artistic director, "means dealing with how a set of knowledge, practices, and techniques is passed down from one generation to the next. It may seem like an abstract process, but it is actually something very concrete, something everyday. Something that is an integral part of our being human, social animals. We don't imagine this passage as a transmission of data-a download, to use a metaphor from the world of the Net-so much as the architecture of open source software, where anyone can modify the code handed down to them, and put their personal signature on it."
Also at the center of the 2018 City of Loano National Prize is a passing of the baton: from the artistic direction of John Vignola - among the founders of the prize now fourteen years ago - to the new one, curated by Jacopo Tomatis.
Rich program of concerts, all with free admission.
It begins Monday, July 23, at 9:30 p.m. on the Promenade at Loano (Orto Maccagli Cultural Space) with Trouveur Valdotèn, the most important folk group in the Val d'Aosta, active since the 1970s in researching and re-proposing folk music from the French-Provençal Alpine area. The Trouveurs are now composed of the Boniface family, with the two founders Liliana Bertolo and Alessandro Boniface and their two children Rémy and Vincent Boniface. This will be followed by bal folk with Pitularita (aka Rémy and Vincent), a spin-off of the “troubadours from Valle d'Aosta” among the most accredited dance music ensembles around. During the evening, Trouveur Valdotèn will collect the 2018 Loano Cultural Reality Award.
On Tuesday, July 24, the Premio moves to the more intimate Chiostro di Sant'Agostino for a concert by Canio Loguercio and Alessandro D'Alessandro. Winners of the 2017 Targa Tenco for the best record in dialect, the two have recently established themselves among the best new songwriting proposals, mixing Loguercio's lyrics, in a refined and eccentric Neapolitan, and the folk-electronic sounds of D'Alessandro's accordion, among the best young performers of the instrument in Italy. During the evening, Gastone Pietrucci and La Macina will receive the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by the Loano Prize organization.
The evening of Wednesday, July 25, again in the Cloisters of St. Augustine, is all about the winner of the Loano Award for Best Album of the Year 2017, awarded by a jury of more than sixty specialized journalists: Elena Ledda, voice of Sardinia par excellence and among the most beautiful Italian folk voices, will present with her band the album Lantiàs. With Elena Ledda's band a special guest: Gabriele Mirabassi, unanimously recognized among the greatest clarinetists in our country, and not only.
On July 24 and 25, starting at 8 p.m., in the cloister of St. Augustine, in collaboration with the CEIS Foundation-which runs the reception center for asylum seekers in the former convent-an Ethnic Apericena will be offered with tasting of typical dishes from the countries of origin of the hosted youths.
Instead, it is a real party that is planned for Thursday, July 26: on the stage of the Giardino del Principe Summer Arena will take the Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino, one of the best contemporary interpreters of the Salento pizzica tradition, and one of the most engaging shows around, already appreciated on the stages of major festivals around the world, from WOMAD to Sziget to the SXSW Music Festival in Texas. The Canzoniere is led today by violinist Mauro Durante, who inherited its direction from his father Daniele, in a generational transition that well embodies the reGenerations theme of the 2018 Loano Prize.
The musical evening will have a charitable purpose and will be accompanied by fundraising for the Pavese Parkinsoniani Onlus Association, which is committed to offering social welfare support services to Parkinson's patients to ensure their dignity, care and recreation.
Closing on Friday, July 27, again on the Promenade, with the premiere of the Loano Giovani Prize, strongly desired by the new artistic direction: on the stage of the Spazio Culturale Orto Maccagli Cultural Space, Lame da Barba, the Bolognese group winner of the 2017 Loano Giovani Prize, awarded by the jury of specialized journalists, will open the evening. Lame da Barba's proposal starts from the tradition of barbershop, in the past a real school of folk music, and reinterprets it in a Mediterranean key, mixing folk waltzes with Balkan music, tarantella with Turkish tradition. This is followed by a dance party with Saber Système, authors of one of the most interesting debut records of the past season. The music of the youngsters from Cuneo (all under 20) mixes Occitan tradition with African rhythms and electronics with originality, for new music to dance to, somewhere between disco and folk party.
Also returning for 2018 are the customary afternoon insights The Prize Meets... at the Nassiriya Gardens on the waterfront at 6 p.m., always with free admission.
On Monday, 23, space will be given to Trouveur Valdotèn, winners of the 2018 Cultural Reality Award, who will retrace their 40-year history with journalist and artistic director of the Award Jacopo Tomatis. On Tuesday, 24, Enrico de Angelis will instead moderate the meeting-showcase with Gastone Pietrucci, 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award winner, on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Marchigiano La Macina Popular Singing and Research Group.
The next day, Wednesday 25, it is Elena Ledda's turn along with Valentina Casalena, Mauro Palmas and Michele Palmas. They will talk about Lantiàs, a record awarded Best Album 2017, and about Premio Parodi, a festival and award from Cagliari dedicated to the memory of former Tazenda Andrea Parodi, on the tenth anniversary of his winning the Loano Award for the record Rosa Resolza, recorded right along with Elena Ledda.
Finally, on Thursday 26 - again in keeping with the main theme of the 2018 Loano Prize - journalist Ciro De Rosa will lead the meeting with the Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino and Roberto Licci, musician and member of the group's first “historical” lineup, a unique opportunity to reflect on the intergenerational trajectories of popular music.
The full program.{:}
