It was presented today – Wednesday 8 May 2024 – at the Teatro Comunale in Vicenza “City Lights” a new festival promoted by the Fondazione Teatro Comunale Città di Vicenza in collaboration with the Department of Culture and Tourism of the Municipality, with the support of Trivellato Mercedes Benz which was born, in this first edition, in close connection with the themes and aesthetics brought to the Basilica Palladiana from the exhibition “POP/BEAT Italia 1960-1979. Liberi di Sognare” (until 30 June), edited by Roberto Floreani, and translates them into poetry, music, literature and social history of those unrepeatable years.
“City Lights” will go on stage Saturday 8 June at the Municipal Theater of Vicenza, from 4.00 pm to midnight, a special non-stop event that bears the signature, as artistic direction of Marco Ghiotto, journalist and music critic, creator and director of the online magazine vicult.net, who will take care of the contemporary music section of the new artistic season for the Foundation; the festival presents itself as a showcase and an opening on that particular historical period, especially on the music and the social and literary aspects that characterized and made those “revolutionary” decades unique, rich in ideas and ferments still today capable of contaminating the contemporaneity.
The name is an evident reference to the City Lights Book Store, inaugurated by Lawrence Ferlinghetti in 1953, not only a bookshop and a publishing house, but the place of election and birth of the beat generation, a meeting place where many of the protagonists of that incredible season they spent their time reading, exchanging poems and opinions and forging a lifestyle that marked the generations to follow. But City Lights also wants to be the symbol of a city like Vicenza, which intends to point its lights towards new and ambitious musical and artistic horizons; because City Lights are also those city lights from the extraordinary film by Charlie Chaplin (1931), a ray of light so that Vicenza can be “illuminated” by the intellectual ferments that this new event also proposes, in the intention of the promoters.
“City Lights” it therefore presents itself as a festival (innovation and in-depth analysis are the two main directions of the day), with a rich program that develops from the afternoon until late evening, a succession of performances, readings, talks and musical improvisations, starring actors, authors, musicians and some really special guests, like Carlo Massarinihistoric television presenter (and much more) of Mister Fantasya program dedicated to video art and the then newborn music videos, e James Senese, saxophonist universally recognized for his very particular musical style, among the founders of Neapolitan Power, alongside some well-known names from the Vicenza scene such as Danilo Memoli, Titino Carrara, Giorgia Antonelli and Piergiorgio Piccoli.
The creator and artistic director of the new festival, Marco Ghiotto, will be “directing the proceedings” and moderating the meetings, all open to the public.
The day will be divided into two parts, dedicated respectively to American beat et al Italian popto address the two topics in depth; eight appointments scheduled, interspersed with moments of meeting and socializing.
In 1956, “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg was published, the fourth in the series of editions of City Lights Pocket Poets Series, a psychedelic ballad that is a cry of protest against the United States of America, a work that led to Ferlinghetti’s arrest for obscenity; but the spirit that animates
the poem managed to pervade everything that came after, from Jack Keroauc to Bob Dylan: the America of the 60s was precisely what you could breathe in Ferlinghetti’s City Lights.
In the City Lights festival on 8 June we will dutifully start with the 60s in the USA, to talk about the beat generation, pop culture, the underground, the freak and hippy world, thanks to the readings of some manifesto works by Allen Ginsberg And Jack Kerouacplayed by Titino Carrara And Giorgia Antonelli, accompanied by live music from Bobpet quartet Of Danilo Memoli; to follow, a show lesson on Andy Warholfounder of Pop Art and his Velvet Underground which were launched by his own Factory, curated by Marco Ghiotto.
Frank Zappa’s freak scene and counterculture will be presented instead Marco Dragowriter, translator and radio host, who will introduce the live show of Dan Martinazzi & The Torture Never Stops, while Piergiorgio Piccoli will conclude the first part of the festival with the reading of “It’s Allright Ma’ (I’m Only Bleeding)” the dark and immense masterpiece by Bob Dylan which contains some of the most important lyrics of his production, a reading performed by Piergiorgio Piccoli accompanied by a final Live Jam Session with the members of the two bands of Martinazzi and Memoli.
Made in Italy pop, the scene of the 70s between political tensions, prog/pop music, festivals, new fashions and the unprecedented artistic scene, will instead be the main themes of the second half of the festival – “A red tulip” – a tribute to the experience of the Sicilian Antigroup, with the title of the session referring to their first anthology published in 1971.
This second part of City Lights, the evening event which will begin at 8.30pm, again at the Tcvi Ridotto, will open in grand style with Carlo Massarini which he will present to the public “Dear Mr. Fantasy photo-story of a musical era in which everything was possible”, or the Italy of the years 1969/1982 told by one of the absolute protagonists of the music scene of the time. From the Rolling Stones to prog rock and the first big concerts, from West Coast voices to singer-songwriters, through punk and the New York scene, Carlo Massarini will bring back the dream of a generation which, thanks to rock, was able to open up to the rest of the world.
To follow, another talk dedicated to “Italia Beat – The Capelloni”conducted by Marco Ghiotto, to question the authoritative voices of Carlo Massarini, Renato Marengo (historic record producer and talent scout), Riccardo Bertoncelli (the father of Italian music criticism, later made famous by Francesco Guccini) e James Senese to talk about the fervor of that era, from the end of the sixties to the period of protest, of festivals and Italian pop, but also of street clashes, with the prog boom and the social commitment of singer-songwriters.
And it will be exactly that James Senese together with his group Central Naples, one of the main protagonists of the Italian prog/jazz season of the 70s, will close the first edition of City Lights in style, with a live performance that will feature cult pieces from the band’s repertoire, with their very particular blend of jazz-rock and the additions of Neapolitan popular music. The group today brings to the stages a renewed experience always balanced between jazz-funk, a splash of Latin music and the Mediterranean tradition.
A day that aims to be a true journey through time and into an era that shaped the culture of the twentieth century. “A journey into those years which – to quote John Lennon – perhaps didn’t give us the answers, but gave us a glimpse of all the possibilities”.
