InCanto Summer Festival in Ivrea, “Those black and white pianos with two great performers”

«The InCanto Summer Festival 2022 will really touch the chords of the audience’s emotions. In fact, at the beginning of the first evening, we will not only have a tribute to Vittorio, whose wife will be in the room, but also a tribute, at the end of the two appointments, to Stefano d’Orazio, the unforgotten drummer of the Pooh, who has gone away forever in the 2020, due to Covid “

IVREA. It is a dream that comes true with contours different from those desired, but of no less efficacy and intensity in the memory, that of Mauro Cignetti compared to the presence of Roby Facchinetti at the festival. “I had imagined – explains Cignetti – our stage furnished with only two pianos, one black and one white, to which Vittorio De Scalzi and Roby Facchinetti would sit, respectively, two glorious stories of music, both expressions of groups that have marked the Italian musical history of the last sixty years. Both were really enthusiastic about the idea: Vittorio, immediately, and just as quickly Roby who, already on the phone, said he was happy and willing to plan this performance. Then, Vittorio’s illness and the aftermath that were fatal to him. I met him in Sanremo, shortly before he left us forever, already with his oxygen respirator and aware of what awaited him. He made me promise that I would not abandon the festival and that I would persevere in shared projects. For this I went to Bergamo and convinced Facchinetti to accept the artistic direction of our event, also as a tribute to that musical performance for two that would no longer exist. Decision on which the intervention of his friend Jack Giacosa had its weight, also linked by great friendship to Roby, who called him and pleaded my cause and, indirectly, the cause of Vittorio and the festival ».

Cignetti explains that he found in the historic solo voice of the Poohs not only an important artist, a true number one, but also a person of great depth and human qualities rare to find: “A man – he emphasizes – who, instead of giving himself airs or adopting the haughty attitude of so many artists who could never even remotely compare their path to his, welcomed me with great simplicity, immediately establishing a relationship of sincere familiarity. Meeting him, among other things, I told him that, as a kid, he was my idol, I had all the Pooh albums and, when I got married, during the ceremony in the church, at the offertory, my wife Graziana and I did play one of their songs ». And he concludes: «The InCanto Summer Festival 2022 will really touch the chords of the audience’s emotions. In fact, at the beginning of the first evening, we will not only have a tribute to Vittorio, whose wife will be in the room, but also a tribute, at the end of the two appointments, to Stefano d’Orazio, the unforgotten drummer of the Pooh, who has gone away forever in the 2020, due to Covid “.