An evening to rediscover Italian singer-songwriters — with a different instrumental master each time.
When you're young, you fall in love with distant worlds: American folk, English progressive, science fiction, madrigals. Then one day a melody, a lyric you'd never really heard before, hits you like a fist and you want to share it with everyone — because it doesn't just speak about you, it speaks about all of us. I Maestri Cantori d'Italia was born from this: the desire to give audiences some of the finest gems of Italian singer-songwriters, with the tools of storytelling as well as music.
The evening is built on an interweaving of songs and stories: the story of how a song came to be, who wrote it, what that person was going through at that moment. De André and Fossati writing an album together over one summer. Dalla spending an entire night talking with a student in a Montecatini hotel. Guccini wielding the pen like a sword. Battiato descending into a basement studio to record a philosophical masterpiece. Fossati taming grief with memories of his railway-worker grandfather. Stories that change the way you listen to a song — forever.
The format has one fixed variable: Mauro Ghilardini is always at the centre, voice and storytelling. But each evening brings a different instrumental master — piano, guitar, accordion — who gives the performance its own particular colour. Not an accompanist: an interlocutor.
The same songwriters, a different evening every time.
The repertoire draws from the great names of Italian singer-songwriters — De André, Fossati, Dalla, Guccini, Battiato, Capossela, Gaber, De Gregori, Battisti — chosen each time in dialogue with the guest master and the context of the evening. The songs are not simply performed: they are introduced, contextualised, told. The audience leaves having heard music they already knew in an entirely new way, or having discovered something they didn't know they wanted to know. The format has already been performed with Francesco Maffeis on piano and Walter Brambilla on guitar.
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The fee varies depending on the evening and the guest master involved. Write to me for availability and a quote.