Traffic revolutionized these days at Village of Taranto. In fact, several changes to the road system are planned for the occasion Medimex 2024, the event-review that includes not only concerts on the Lungomare roundabout at the weekend but also exhibitions, meetings and showcases on the world of music.
This morning, Tuesday 18 June, the Municipality of Taranto he spread the ordinance with modifications and prohibitions. Here she is.
The event is underway
Start Medimex 2024, International Festival & Music Conference promoted by Puglia Sounds, the program of the Puglia Region for the development of the regional music system implemented with the Teatro Pubblico Pugliese – Regional Consortium for Arts and Culture, scheduled until 23 June in Taranto with concerts by The Smile (first date in Italy), Pulp (only Italian date) e The Jesus and Mary Chain (only Southern Italy date).
Opening of the exhibition on Wednesday 19 June at 6pm at MarTA (entry by invitation). Bob Gruen: John Lennon, The New York Yearsheld from 19 June to 14 July National Archaeological Museum of Taranto, tells, through 60 photographs and texts, the photographer’s most important collaboration, that with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Shortly after the couple moved to New York in 1971, Bob Gruen became their personal photographer, as well as friend, thus managing to document, through his camera, images of them in both their professional and private lives. In 1974, during a shooting with Lennon, Gruen suggested that the former Beatles wear the white t-shirt with the writing New York City, which Gruen himself had bought for him at a tourist stall about a year earlier. The result of that photo session was the now iconic images of John Lennon, perhaps his most famous photos of him, wearing the white T-shirt – the sleeves were cut off by Gruen himself – with the skyline of his adopted city in the background. Whether they were shots of Lennon and Yoko while walking together in a park, or those included in the booklet of the album “Walls and Bridges”, or even Sean Lennon as a newborn, Lennon in front of the Statue of Liberty while making the peace sign, the work of Gruen witnesses almost ten years of John and Yoko’s life in New York, after the breakup of the Beatles. Bob Gruen was invited by Yoko Ono to frequent their apartment located in the Dakota Building (outside which Lennon was murdered on December 8, 1980) more and more often. And it was in their home that, in 1977, Lennon recorded some audio cassettes. In those recordings we find songs like Free as a Birdan early version of Real Love And Now and Then. If the engravings of Free as a Bird And Real Love were good enough to be “completed” by McCartney, Harrison and Ringo and included in the posthumously released Beatles Anthology between 1995 and 1996, Now and Then he had to wait for the intervention of artificial intelligence to see the light. With the technology available in 1995, in fact, it was not possible to separate Lennon’s piano and vocal tracks. Only in 2022, thanks to the use of artificial intelligence, could the song be finished and then released in November 2023. We can certainly consider Now and Then the latest demonstration of the timeless genius of the Beatles who, starting from a home tape by Lennon, almost fifty years later, produced what they themselves declared to be their last song. The exhibition aims to lead the visitor through the shots of one of the masters of rock photography, not only in the years in which two extraordinary artists such as John Lennon and Yoko Ono produced music, art and socio-cultural revolution, but also to reflect on the use of artificial intelligence by the surviving members of the Beatles in the process that leads to the birth of Now and Then. Once again it is the Beatles who create music and lyrics and, as has already happened in the past, use the best technology available to create the best possible product. The exhibition is hosted within the National Archaeological Museum of Taranto where it will dialogue with the thousands of finds on display within the MArTA, a place of protection and research, a scientific reference center for the international archaeological community, open to dialogue with the contemporary and with all the artistic expressions of every era. Bob Gruen (New York, 1945) is unanimously considered one of the most important photographers on the music and cultural scene of the last forty years. His most famous shots (John Lennon, Johnny Rotten, Rolling Stones, Elvis, Madonna, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Tina Turner and Debbie Harry above all), as well as having obtained recognition all over the world, have been exhibited in museums such as the MoMA in New York, the Brooklyn Museum and in the most important art galleries. His photo “Sid Vicious with Hot Dog”, for example, was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in London in 1999 for their permanent collection. His images have been used for album covers by Ike & Tina Turner, Yoko Ono, John Lennon, Kiss, Ramones, Bob Dylan, Johnny Winter and many others. At 7 pm at MarTA Bob Gruen will be the protagonist of a talk accompanied by Luca De Gennaro.
From 9pm at Spazioporto (free entry) the showcases return with an evening dedicated to World Music, in collaboration with Rete Itraliana World Music, with Accasaccio, band originally from Salento that mixes traditional Southern musical influences with modern sounds, Eleonora Bordonaro, Sicilian singer-songwriter-interpreter who deals with world music by reinterpreting Sicilian songs of oral tradition, with attention to the story of the female world, Francesco Moramarco, a new project of Mediterranean experiments and contaminations, Kyoto, solo musical project by Roberta Russo, singer-songwriter, drummer, producer and performer born in 1996, raised between Monza and Bari who blends beatbox with dark and cinematic electronics, Salvio Vassallo and Monica Pinto, Monica Pinto is a singer, songwriter, co-founder and lead singer of “Spaccanapoli” produced by Peter Gabriel and Salvio Vassallo’s Real World Records, multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer, specialized in the electronic reworking of music from the folk repertoire, Sandro Joyeux, Parisian by birth, globetrotter by vocation, he traveled a million kilometers with the guitar on his shoulders to collect traditions, dialects and sounds of the South of the world. The showcases and the entire Medimex programming can be listened to on Radio Medimexthe official broadcast that will follow all the events, producing live broadcasts, interviews and specials created and hosted by journalists Michele Casella, Carlo Chicco and Corrado Minervini, broadcast on the medimex.it website, on social channels, on the main digital platforms and on web radios of the circuit Common placesan initiative of the Youth Policies of the Puglia Region and ARTI. For information and entry methods medimex.it.
