Stopping after a 60-date sold-out winter tour? PFM, Premiata Forneria Marconi, doesn’t think about it at all: the band, on the world music scene for over 50 years, is ready to start again with a double summer tour, which starts this evening from Piacenza and which will also land in Puglia and Basilicata during the summer. Double tour because there will be two shows on offer, «PFM Live», a set list of the greatest hits from their vast repertoire, and «PFM canta De André», which celebrates the partnership with the great Genoese singer-songwriter.
The first Apulian event on the calendar is July 3rd, in Trani, in Piazza della Cattedrale, as part of the Rush Summer Fest, with this second show, which will also be offered on August 4th at the Palazzo Marchesale in Melpignano (Le), and on August 21st in Ostuni (Br) at the Arena Eventi Foro Boario. With the «PFM Live» show the band will be on August 26th in Grumento Nova (Pz), in Piazza Umberto I. Tickets for the dates, produced by D&D Concerti, are available on www.pfmworld.com.
The lineup on stage is extraordinary: Franz Di Cioccio (vocals and drums), Patrick Djivas (bass), Marco Sfogli (electric guitar), Alessandro Scaglione (keyboards), Eugenio Mori (drums). Special guest: Luca Zabbini (keyboards and vocals), and during the dates of «PFM canta De André» there will also be Michele Ascolese on acoustic guitar. Di Cioccio and Djivas themselves tell the «Gazzetta» how they still have this energy after over fifty years of music.
What’s your secret?
“There isn’t one. Music is part of our life, it’s like food, the fuel that keeps us going. It’s always been inside us, so much so that in the show there’s a moment in which we talk about this indissoluble relationship.”
How important is it for you to remember Fabrizio De André in music?
«It’s a tribute in which we rearrange some of his songs that we took on tour together, while in the central part there is a totally new version, very musical, of some of his songs. The good newsa gift for his hypothetical 80 years in the skies. We started this project because everything we shared with Fabrizio has remained in our heads and hearts, beautiful things must never disappear. And then it’s wonderful to see the younger ones who come to our concerts not because they are stimulated in some way, but because they have already discovered De André and his depth that manages to reach everyone, thanks also to his fluidity in writing».
An audience that continues to renew itself, then?
«Constantly. It’s as if something that already lives inside us was awakened, even in the youngest. Then we try to please everyone, the set list never lacks the most famous hits, some instrumental and solo songs, because they are waiting for them. But we try to build the show night by night, also based on our will.”
You have always been considered a prog band: how is prog music in Italy?
«The word itself, “progressive”, means “music that goes forward and doesn’t stop”. And that’s what we did, we were classified as prog but we never stopped on one genre. Our music is total, it embraces classical, free jazz, De André, we range with experience and passion. Music to be invented every night, with songs we’ve never played, or by letting ourselves be inspired by the people we see around us. We have no chains of any kind».
Over 6500 concerts in your career: how can you not get bored?
«We play live. Without computers. On stage we feel totally free to do what we want, we never focus on the same things. To make a comparison, we play “al dente”, there is never anything reheated. Everything “cooked at the moment”».
You will be in Puglia a lot this summer
«We always like to come back. I (Patrick) just spent a wonderful week in Polignano, a simply perfect place.”
And after the summer? A little relaxation?
“But what relaxation! There will still be so many concerts to do.”
