Giovanni Guidi and his “Little Italy Orchestra” at the Fajr Music Festival
The Italian Embassy in Tehran hosted this week, in partnership with the International Committee of the Fajr Music Festival, a contemporary jazz tour by Giovanni Guidi, Italian pianist and composer, and his "Little Italy Orchestra".
The musicians, for the first time outside of Europe since the beginning of the pandemic, held two musical performances of a very original version of contemporary jazz music, composed by Guidi himself, amid a very warm reception by the Iranian public.
The first concert, entitled "Little Italy", was held at Vahdat Hall on February 14, and presented as a highlight of the 37th Fajr Music Festival.
“Little Italy is a tale, a story of migration in music. It narrates countless stories of those Italians who set out into the unknown in search of fortune, opportunities, or simply dignity. It is the story of young women and men who left everything, risked everything, lost everything or found everything”, were the words used by Giovanni Guidi in commenting on his musical program.
The second concert, an acoustic piano performance entitled "100 love letters", was held at the residence of the Italian Ambassador in Tehran, Giuseppe Perrone, as a tribute to prominent Italian writer, poet, and film director Pier Paolo Pasolini on the 100th anniversary of his birth.
"Giovanni Guidi’s musical tribute to Pasolini, a prominent Italian intellectual who established a special bond with Iran, the land he chose to shoot his movie ‘The Flower of the One Thousand and One Nights’, is particularly telling about the robust historic relationship between Italy and Iran. It exemplifies the importance attached by the Italian Embassy in Tehran to highlighting the spectacular cultural interaction existing between the two countries", commented Ambassador Perrone.
The acoustic piano performance, specially composed by Guidi to commemorate Pasolini’s extraordinary impact on Italian culture and society, was broadcast live on Instagram and will soon be available on the Italian Embassy's Instagram (@ItalyinIran) and YouTube (Italian Embassy in Tehran) channels.
By Siavash Sufinejad