PRESS RELEASE (24/07/2014)
Friday, July 25, a Loano, the tenth edition of the City of Loano National Award for Italian Traditional Music will close with the production-event “Singing the Voice - Folk and women's singing, from north to south”which will bring together, starting at 9:30 pm, on the stage of the’Prince's Garden Summer Arena, some of the most significant interpreters of the Italian folk tradition: Paola Lombardo, Le Balentes, Monica Pinto with Spakka Neapolis 55, Rita Botto with Banda di Avola.
The brainchild of music journalist John Vignola, artistic director of the City of Loano Prize, the evening will feature artists from different backgrounds, geographical and cultural, but who share the idea that tradition means travel, adventure, renewal and research.
“For the 10th edition," says Vignola - the City of Loano Prize decided to give voice to women who interpret tradition with modernity and a sense of adventure, without forgetting their roots but also looking toward the future of traditional music. A music that is moving faster and faster, perhaps elusive, but also surprisingly contemporary. Singing as an ineffable, almost ancestral relationship between words and sound, between rhythm and melody, between storytelling and the language to which it belongs. From the canons toward novel languages, without extinguishing either curiosity or memory: it will be a concert without a net, in the best sense of the word.”
The evening will open with The Balentes, (Stefania Liori, Lulli Lostia and Pamela Lorico), a female vocal formation inspired by tenores singing, characteristic of the Sardinian male tradition. A decidedly revisited chant when one considers that it is reinterpreted by female voices and especially that the typical “a tenores” formation is the quartet while Le Balentes are three.
Over time, Le Balentes have contaminated the tradition with more modern sounds ranging from rock to jazz and other ethnic realities from around the Mediterranean basin, especially by flanking a cappella songs with songs accompanied by musicians.
In the course of their activity they have collaborated with numerous artists including: Mauro Pagani, Samuele Bersani, Banda Osiris, Davide Van De Sfroos, Gabin Dabirè, Fiorello, Andrea Parodi, Elena Ledda, Rita Marcotulli, Piero Pelù.
He will then take the stage Paola Lombardo, one of the voices that best represents female singing in Piedmont today. A singer of Occitan origin, she has been a member of some of Piedmont's best-known groups such as Charta de Mar, Compagnons Roulants, Tri Muzike, and le Vijà; her vocality is well suited to the interpretation of classical balladry, yet adapting with a certain naturalness to a fresh, original and highly innovative reinterpretation of traditional repertoire. She has collaborated with Moni Ovadia, Maurizio Martinotti, Maria Colegni, Donata Pinti, Mau Mau, Michel Bianco, Elena Ledda, and Riccardo Tesi. He co-founded with Valeria Benigni the vocal duo Trobairitz d'oc, with whom he recorded two records that both received top recognition from Trad Magazine.
The journey through the female “voices” of folk song will then move south to meet the Monica Pinto singer of the Spakka Neapolis 55. The band is the result of a long musical experience aimed at researching and experimenting with the sound languages of southern Italian oral tradition and those related to modernity.
The group, founded by Monica Pinto and Antonio Fraioli, was founded in 2000 under the name “Spaccanapoli” (the street that bisects the ancient center of the present city of Naples). Through its artistic project, the group expresses the cultural crossroads that the city of Naples has represented through the centuries.
In Naples different cultures and peoples have always met, clashed, known and mixed. All this has happened through the particular ability that this city has always shown over the centuries, namely, that of absorbing and reshaping through its codes the different cultural influences with which it has been in contact, while at the same time maintaining a very strong expressive and cultural identity.
The evening will close with Rita Botto and Band of Avola who will receive the 2013 Best Album Award for the disk “Terra can nun sentire”.
The meeting between Rita Botto and the Avola Band captained by Director Sebastiano Bell'Arte, was born on the occasion of a concert that debuted with great success at the Jufa Night Festival in Noto, in July 2012. The concert offered an opportunity to unite the island's folk singing tradition with that, equally widespread in Sicily, of municipal bands.
The musical project, with its original character, turned out to be an explosive mixture full of drama, irony and theatricality, which earned these artists the 2014 “City of Loano” National Award for Best Record Production.
Catania's Rita Botto is a singer who finds in her Sicily the energy to take up sound roots that are back in vogue today. A versatile artist whose main gift is communicativeness, she boasts a Mediterranean voice with which she interprets stories and feelings of an ancient land.
Through August 20, you can admire the exhibition “10 Years of Traditional Music, a photographic trail that will wind along the city streets. Shots recalling the most significant moments experienced in different corners of the city were taken by photographers Silvio Massolo e Martin Cervelli.
The City of Loano Award, under theartistic direction of music journalist John Vignola, is organized by the’Society of the Curious Association in collaboration with the’Department of Tourism and Culture of the City of Loano, with contributions from the Liguria Region, A. Foundation De Mari and the sponsorship of the Savona Province, of the’ANCI and the MEI.
The event is organized with the contribution and collaboration of Double J Ltd. Supermarket Management, Grand Hotel Garden Lido and Excelsior Hotel, Technique.
