PRESS RELEASE (19/07/2014)
Sunday, July 20 will go into full swing on the City of Loano National Award for Italian Traditional Music.
For six days, the city will host concerti, stage, square dance, photo exhibition and meetings with musicians and journalists. Concerts on the waterfront and in the square, as well as afternoon meetings, will tell the “rumors” most significant of traditional musical culture, tracing Italy from south to north, with a close look at the “voice” of women.
As a reminder of the 10-year anniversary of the festival, dedicated to contemporary production of traditional music with Italian roots, is the exhibition 10 YEARS OF TRADITIONAL MUSIC which has been painting the streets of the city's historic center with large color and black-and-white images since yesterday afternoon. It is a journey into the memory of the festival traveled through the characters and atmospheres that animated the many evenings of the Prize, portraits made by photographers Silvio Massolo e Martin Cervelli.
Kicking off the festival will be Sunday, July 20, in the Nassiriya Fallen Gardens, to the 9 p.m., the stage dedicated to Sicilian dance. Margherita Badalà will offer the basic elements of “ballettu,” a vibrant dance of rhythmicity with agro-pastoral origins. A scholar, researcher and teacher of the traditional dances of southern Italy, Margherita Badalà is director of the three-year School of Training in Traditional Dances of Southern Italy in Catania.
In 2002 he began research on traditional dance in Sicily and especially in the Peloritani area where he deepened his knowledge of Ballettu of which he initiated the revival through teaching, ritual festivals and lectures.
The internship will continue Monday July 21 and will close with a dance party, which will take place at 21.30 in Rocca Square.
The evening will weave together sounds and dances from the Trinacria conquers of the’Occitania. Guests of the evening will be the Sicilian musical group Unavantaluna and the Piedmontese one Senhal.
Unavantaluna cumpagnia di musica sixiliana is an ensemble of musicians united by common origins Sicilians and a passion for the arts and folk traditions of their land. Since the birth of the group, the need to unite the past with the present and the desire to search for a possible balance between tradition and musical innovation are strong. Winning the 2013 Andrea Parodi Award, dedicated to World Music, confirms the validity of their artistic journey, culminating in their latest record work “Isula Ranni,” containing the award-winning song “Isuli”.
Present on the music scene for some 20 years, Senhal offers music that ranges between revisiting traditional songs from the Occitan valleys of the Cuneo area and new composition. The language of Occitan music is the expressive medium, the opportunity to attempt an original discourse that defines the typical and unique sound of the Senhal group. The evolutionary intent of the new compositions thus results in an attempt to combine personal forms of expression with the specificity of tradition.
The festival program will be enriched, again this year, by the afternoon initiative (hrs. 18.30 - Nassiriya Fallen Gardens) the “Prize Meet...”, organized in collaboration with labels, artists, journalists and cultural workers who will be at Loano to promote their projects.
Monday, July 21 Silvio Peron will present his latest album “Eschandihà de vita - Stories of characters from the Occitan Valleys in Piedmont”. Silvio Peron in the album made use of the collaboration of seventeen musicians and singers from different backgrounds, from Bologna to Marseille, who also partly took care of the arrangements. Each song thus presents very different atmospheres, timbres and arrangements. Lyrically, each character speaks in the first person and in the Languedoc language variant of his or her country of origin, with the aim, among other things, of highlighting the musicality given by the characteristics of each.
The meeting will be led by Cyrus De Rosa.
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.
The City of Loano National Award for Italian Traditional Music also received this year's prestigious award from the Medal of the President of the Italian Republic.
