Back to the UK - Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everybody!

I hope you had a wonderful time during these last festive weeks, enjoyed the company of your families and had a good start of the New Year!

I am finally back home in Newmarket, after some weeks with my family in Italy. I was there for some holidays, but I found some time to meet my friend Riccardo Pes, a great cellist who graduated last year at the Royal College of Music in London, to record a piece written especially for us by the composer Battista Pradal. Riccardo and I both studied composition with Battista and we are always very happy to perform his music!
Pieces for voice and cello are not so common - actually, they're almost inexistent - but as we wanted to do something together, we asked Battista for some help. I introduced Battista to the poetry by Anthony Howell, a great poet who lives in London, and he chose to set to music the beautiful poem "The Forbidden Rose". After this, Battista promised us to write other songs and we are looking forward to discovering and performing them!
You can listen to "The Forbidden Rose" on YouTube here, and have a glance "behind the scenes" here. I hope you will enjoy the song!

Here we are, recording the song in my hometown in Italy:

If you want to know better Riccardo Pes, please visit his site, or find him on Facebook or Twitter.
You can find out more about Battista Pradal here and on Twitter.
As to Anthony Howell, here is his blog.

See you soon with some news about concerts in Suffolk and in Wales!

Alessandro

Hi everybody!

I had a wonderful time in Italy singing in the beautiful Auditorium "Pollini" in Padua with my great colleagues and friends Silvia Regazzo and Alberto Miodini! It's always an incomparable pleasure to do music with them - and the program we did was breathtaking: Mahler Lieder!

A few days after this, I sang in Ashley church with Cedric Ghevaert. A lovely Christmas concert during the Christmas Trees Festival: it was really heartwarming to perform in the church filled with such a warm audience!
A big thanks to Cedric, his wife Marloes who joined us to sing "Panis Angelicus", Shelley and everyone who helped to organise the concert!

In a few days, I'll be back home in Italy to spend Christmas holidays with family and friends.
I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year!
See you in 2019!

Alessandro

Christmas Concert in Ashley

Hi there,

here we are, with finally a concert in the UK!

I will have the great pleasure to sing again with Cedric Ghevaert at the piano on Sunday 1st December at 7 pm at the St. Mary's Church in Ashley, CB8 9DU.
We will perform some Italian music by Donizetti, Puccini and Tosti, some sacred songs and, of course, some carols!

The concert will take place during the Ashley Christmas Tree & Flower Festival, so come along to enjoy some beautiful music, have a look at the trees exposition and drink with us a cup of tea in the intermission!

Upcoming Concerts in Belgium and Italy

Hi everybody!

I'm ready to leave for Belgium, where I will sing next Sunday with organist Ferruccio Bartoletti.

We will perform in the St. Martin Church in Kontich, a town at the gates of Antwerpen.
The church's oldest parts date back to the XI century and there is, of course, a wonderful organ:

Then, at the end of November, I'll be back in Italy to join my dear friends Silvia Regazzo and Alberto Miodini to perform again "Das Lied von der Erde", one of the greatest masterworks by Gustav Mahler.

We will perform in Padua, in the great concert season organised by "Amici della Musica", an important music Association which has been offering concerts to the city since 1952, inheriting the tradition of an older Association founded in 1920.

Stay tuned for some other news... and a concert in the UK!

Benefit concert for NAITbabies.org

It will be a great pleasure to join a lot of friends for this benefit event to raise funds for NAITbabies.org!

Find us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/events/675100982849611/
https://www.facebook.com/naitbabies.org/

Book your place here:
www.bookwhen.com/naitbabies

What are NAITbabies?

Blood platelets stop the bleeding when you have an injury. Just like for red blood cells where you can be of A, B or O blood type, there are differences between blood platelet types. Neonatal AlloImmune Thrombocytopenia (NAIT) occurs in about 1 in 1,000 pregnancies, but only 1 in 10 of those will be severely affected. It happens when a woman is pregnant and her platelet type is not compatible with the platelet type of the father. Her body will recognise the baby’s platelets as foreign and will have an immune response and make antibodies against the baby’s platelets. These antibodies will destroy the baby’s platelets. Often the baby still has (just) enough platelets and they have no symptoms and no treatment is required. However, low platelet counts put the baby at risk of bleeding in the brain and/or other major organs and results in death or lifelong disabilities.
There is no routine blood test that is performed in pregnancy to see if a mother has antibodies to platelets. Most mothers do not even know they have this disease unless they give birth to a baby with a low platelet count or if their sister gives birth to an affected baby.
There is no cure for NAIT. Women are given a medication called intravenous immune globulin, which is made from antibodies from many people, to prevent a low platelet count in the baby. This is often successful, but it is not known how the intravenous immune globulin works. The baby can also be given platelet transfusions in the womb, but these are given with a big needle and there is the risk of bleeding due to puncture of the umbilical cord, which could lead to loss of the pregnancy. Furthermore, platelets only last 7 to 10 days, so this is only a short-term treatment.
Naitbabies are a patient organisation run by families who provide support to others affected by NAIT, promote research into NAIT, and advance the education of the public. Their aim is to see prenatal screening of all pregnant women for NAIT.

Back in the UK!

Here I am, back in Newmarket after a wonderful summer in Italy with a lot of concerts!

The last one, as I told in my last post, was in the beautiful Dolomites, where I sang some Schubert, Mahler, Strauss and Wolf's Songs with Alberto Miodini, one of the finest Italian pianist for chamber music:

And now I am ready to start again to work with my students... I missed teaching very much!

Summer Concerts - Part Two

Hi everybody!

Here I am, nearly ready to come back to the UK... I have just the last concert to do this Saturday, in the beautiful "Mezzano Romantica" Festival in the Trentino Alto Adige mountains, with pianist Alberto Miodini.

In the last weeks, I had a lot of fun singing with old and new friends in my region; I will show you some pictures.
Here I was singing the incredibly beautiful Die Winterreise by Schubert in a Villa dating from the 17th Century with my very good friend Michele:

Here I was with a lot of colleagues paying our tribute to the memory of Claudio Desderi, a great Italian baryton who unfortunately died some months ago:

And finally here are some pictures taken during a very funny concert with Silvia and Anna - sitting at the piano, of course, there was Michele:

So see you soon, stay tuned for some exciting news about my activity in the UK!

Summer Concerts

Hi everybody!

Here I am, back at home in Italy, after the last concert of the first half of the summer events.
I had a great time in Croatia, singing Beethoven's 9th Symphony in the Roman Quarry in Vinkuran, Istria:

and after this a very funny Three Tenor concert in Medulin, with my friends Matteo Mezzaro and Federico Lepre, with pianist Michele Bravin:

You can listen to the last part of the concert here, on the YT channel of the Italian minority in Croatia (from min. 6.30):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3pMQaHtg7E

Finally, after another couple of concerts, I was in La Spezia (Liguria, North-Western Italy) to sing at the Organ Festival "Cinque Terre", with organist Ferruccio Bartoletti. The place was wonderful, and also the organ, dating from 1851:

Now I can finally enjoy a week of relaxing, before the second half of my summer concerts!
See you soon and enjoy your summer!

Back in Italy!

Hi everybody!

Since a couple of days, I'm back home in Italy and I am ready for the first of a large number of concerts I will do during the summer around Italy and in Croatia.
In the next days, I'll have the great pleasure to sing some beautiful music by Schubert, Mahler, Wolf and Strauss in my hometown with a wonderful pianist like Alberto Miodini. After quite a long time, I will sing again some Lieder, the German songs, which I love so much.

After this I will travel to Croatia to sing for the first time in my life Beethoven's 9th Symphony - I'm really excited about this!

Carreras in Cambridge

Today was a special day: Josè Carreras was in Cambridge!

Fitzwilliam College offered him an honorary Fellowship and organised a conversation with the Master to meet the great tenor. It was amazing to listen to his anecdotes and his thoughts about the Opera world: he told us about his career, his love for his native Catalunya and for the voice of Italian tenor Giuseppe Di Stefano, how was wonderful to work with Herbert von Karajan and his big effort to support the work of his Foundation for the research against Leukaemia.

Thanks to the Fitzwilliam college for giving us the chance to meet the wonderful Josè Carreras!

Conference at the Faculty of Music

Even if a bit late, here are a couple of pictures taken during the conference we gave at the Faculty of Music in Cambridge in April.
You can see me with composer Renzo Banzato and oboist Elena Giusto speaking about Renzo's music and playing some excerpts from his Oratory "Va! Scolpisci!".

We had a great time and we were glad that audience appreciated Banzatos' music!