Welcome to the Exciting Errichetta Festival!
From December 12th to 15th, the thirteenth edition of the Errichetta Festival, the grand celebration of traditional music in Rome, brings the eagerly awaited gathering of musicians from around the world. Four nights of music, songs, folk dances, and seminars for musicians.
The festival, conceived and directed by the musicians of Errichetta Underground and produced by Officina delle Culture aps, is funded by Fnsv of the Italian Ministry of Culture. This year, it is also supported by the Ismeo International Association for Studies on the Mediterranean and the Orient, the Polish Institute in Rome, the City of Riofreddo, the Città dell’Utopia, and the Embassy of Georgia to the Holy See. The concerts will take place in Rome at the Teatro Garbatella from December 12th to 14th, and at the Chiesa di San Nicola in Riofreddo on Sunday, December 15th. The seminars will be held on Friday, December 13th, and Saturday, December 14th at La Città dell’Utopia. Embracing tradition and innovation, the artistic project of the Errichetta Festival offers reinterpretations of folk music to present original creations based on traditional sounds, instruments, and dances, creating bridges between cultures. This year, the music and songs come from Georgia, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, France, and Portugal, all the way to the Roman tradition.
The Ensamble Borjomi, with two performances on Friday, December 13th, and Saturday, December 14th, is set to enchant the audience of the Errichetta Festival with the ancient art of Georgian polyphonic singing, a tradition recognized by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. They will present two programs, divided over two days, exploring the repertoire of various Georgian regions, immersing the audience in an ideal journey that, soaring over the peaks and valleys of the Caucasus, allows the succession of vocal techniques and ancient polyphonic arrangements. An experience that is both ancestral revival and future brilliance.
Jarosław Bester, one of the greatest contemporary accordionists, a Polish composer and virtuoso known for his innovative work blending klezmer, jazz, classical, and avant-garde music. His quartet has collaborated with John Zorn’s Tzadik label, helping to spread their music internationally. For this edition of the Errichetta Festival, he will present the program “Bester Plays Zorn” for the first time in Italy.
The New York composer, multi-instrumentalist, avant-garde music guru, and creator of the genre known as Radical Jewish Music, the ingenious John Zorn, created a musical series titled Book of Angels composed of over three hundred themes. The elite of artists invited by Zorn to arrange and record specially selected pieces for the cult label Tzadik includes Jarosław Bester, who has been collaborating with Zorn for about 20 years.
In the 2024 edition, the Errichetta Festival offers an unprecedented production: the virtuoso Macedonian trumpeter Serčuk Alimov, first trumpet of the famous Kocani Orkestar, meets and performs as a soloist with the Metropolitan Jazz Orchestra (Me.J.O.) from Rome with the ambitious and original goal of bridging the common territories of jazz and Romani music of the Balkans.
The artistic idea, curated by saxophonist Federico Pascucci, continues the direction taken in 2017 with the East Trio project and finds space in the Errichetta Festival to involve the MeJO, a 17-piece big band founded in 2021 by Giacomo Serino and Iacopo Teolis. This orchestra, in a spirit of artistic collective, brings together and lives with the ideas of some of the best young Italian jazz soloists.
From several generations of musicians, the violinist Marin Bunea is one of the leading specialists in the music of the Lăutari from Romania and Moldova. In 2009, he, along with others, contributed to the inclusion of the Romanian Doïna (improvised instrumental melodic practice) in UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. On Saturday, December 14th, at the Teatro Garbatella, he will be joined on stage by the musicians of the Taraf de Chisinau with Ion Croitor on double bass and Mihail Sorocan on accordion.
Filuccio e Fattacci take us through the alleys of Rome in a repertoire that includes not only the classic and well-known stornelli but also passagalli, serenades, saltarelli, jokes, monologues, and music sonnets, brought to life by the voice and interpretation of singer and actor Raffaele Risoli, the classical guitar of Stefano Peluso and the acoustic guitar of Fabio Gammone, the accordion of Mirko Ceccaroli, and the percussion of Simone Pulvano.
The Romans, Roots Magic, have been on a journey for several years to illuminate the connections between the original forms of rural Blues from the ’20s and ’30s with the linguistic multiplicity of creative Jazz from the ’60s and ’70s. This journey materializes in a repertoire calibrated around the idea of adapting, revising, and transforming the mother tongue into infinite dialects.
As per the festival tradition, the last set on Saturday at the Teatro Garbatella features Errichetta Underground. Errichetta is a spirit, a force that hovers over the festival as well as every performance of the group. From the band’s original motto “play with joy or do not play,” little has changed: music is an opportunity to rebuild a community of which musicians and the audience are an indissoluble part. This is why Errichetta is an organic entity that has grown over the years by incorporating the experiences of wandering musicians, reshaping a geography that moves between Corsica, Greece, Turkey, Romania, Macedonia, Portugal, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Austria, and the United States.
On Sunday, December 15th, in Riofreddo, Trio Memorie Popolari brings together the classic Neapolitan song and the Coimbra fado. The three musicians, interpreters with high academic training, breathe life into music with refined acoustic sounds, the sweet and polite timbre of the Portuguese soprano, the sinuous lines of the clarinet, and the rhythmic and harmonic heart of the guitar.
The duo “Il Bivio“, composed of Lauriane Maudry and Ange Sierakowski, among the brightest clarinetists of their generation, takes the audience on a musical journey to discover the polyphony of oral and cultivated tradition, from the Hungarian countryside transcriptions of Bartok to unpublished works by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, passing through arrangements of sacred songs from Corsica and Armenia.
Each day, the concerts are preceded by a brief solo improvisational set, “Solo Errichetta.”
The live performance program is accompanied by two free seminars held at the Città dell’Utopia in collaboration with Ismeo. Marin Bunea (Moldova) on Friday, December 13th, from 10:00 to 17:00, presents Moldova and the Ottoman Empire, a musical history between East and West.
Serčuk Alimov (North Macedonia) on Saturday, December 14th, from 10:00 to 17:00, shares The Turkish Roots of Macedonian Music with the participants.
Thursday, December 12th Teatro Garbatella
Concerts start at 8:30 PM
The virtuosity of one of the world’s greatest accordionists serving the compositions of John Zorn and Jewish music
The tradition of Roman songs in their pure essence
From rural blues poetry to the incandescence of creative jazz in a fiery blend
Friday, December 13th Teatro Garbatella
Concerts start at 8:30 PM
- Ensemble Borjomi
Georgian polyphonic singing through exhilarating vocal acrobatics - MeJO Orchestra and Serčuk Alimov
One of Italy’s most dynamic big bands meets the trumpet soloist from the Kočani Orkestar
Saturday, December 14th Teatro Garbatella
Concerts start at 8:30 PM
Journey into the vocal polyphony of rural regions of Georgia
- Marin Bunea and the Taraf de Chișinău
Music from the Lăutari of Romania and Moldova - Errichetta Underground
Play with joy or do not play: boundary-breaking music without limits
Sunday, December 15th Riofreddo Chiesa di San Nicola
Concerts start at 3:00 PM
From Coimbra to Naples, popular songs in their poetic essence
Classical and traditional polyphonies for two clarinets and a voice
SEMINARS
- Marin Bunea (Moldova) Friday, December 13th La città dell’utopia
10:00 – 13:00 / 14:00 – 17:00
Moldova and the Ottoman Empire, a musical history between East and West
- Serčuk Alimov (North Macedonia) Saturday, December 14th La città dell’utopia
10:00 – 13:00 / 14:00 – 17:00
The Turkish Roots of Macedonian Music
Participation in the seminars is free, registration is mandatory via email: workshops.errichettafestival@gmail.com
The Venues
TEATRO GARBATELLA – Piazza Giovanni da Triora, 15 Rome
CHIESA DI SAN NICOLA – Piazza San Nicola Riofreddo (RM)
LA CITTA’ DELL’UTOPIA – Via Valeriano, 3F Rome
Email: errichettafestival@gmail.com
ADMISSION TICKETS TO TEATRO GARBATELLA
€20 DAILY, €50 3-DAY PASS
Advance tickets available on Do it Yourself
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