Here we are. A few hours and the curtain will rise on the second edition of the Trasimeno Prog Festival, which returns and doubles, from two to four days.
Also this year to go up on the stage of the Rocca del Leone in Castiglione del Lago will be younger groups and others that have written the history of progressive rock and it will be possible to witness an absolute debut.
It will start on Thursday 19th August and the first artist to perform will be Jerry Cutillo. The Samnite multi-instrumentalist, after starting with the Albergo Intergalattico Spaziale in the 70s, played in the group of Maestro Pippo Caruso and was also successful in the 80s as a dance music singer under the pseudonym of Moses. This was followed by the formation of his group, OAK, and after the first steps as a cover band by Jethro Tull, a path of original music began. His last two albums are “Giordano Bruno” and “Nine witches under a walnut tree”.
It will then be the turn of the Arti & Mestieri; the Turin band, led by drummer Furio Chirico, has almost fifty years of history. The first and unsurpassed album “Tilt”, full of facets between jazz, prog and rock, is in fact from 1974 and was recently judged by Rolling Stone magazine as the best album of Italian prog. Several musicians have taken turns and many albums have been recorded even if it was necessary to wait almost forty years to find perhaps a successor to the first album; in fact “Parallel Universes” of 2015 is once again a great test of the band. In the meantime, Japan has always paid them great success and in that country they have performed many times, recording several lives. Marco Roagna has returned to guitar instead of Gigi Venegoni, one of the founders and, an absolute novelty, there will be the debut of the Romanian violinist Livia Hagiu, who has already played with bands of the caliber of Deep Purple.
The last line-up of the evening was the project by Patrizio Fariselli Area Open Project. After the success of Area in the 70s with albums such as “Arbeit macht frei”, Crac ”,“ Caution radiation area, “Maledetti” and “1978; the gods go away, the angry ones remain ”, the group, orphaned of the singer, perhaps an understatement term, Demetrio Stratos, has had alternating phases. Only at the beginning of the last decade did his companions Tavolazzi and Tofani return to the stage together with Fariselli, for a short period also producing a live album. Recently the keyboardist entrusted himself to Claudia Tellini on vocals, Walter Paoli on drums and Marco Micheli on bass and set up the Area Open Project. The group, together with the Arti & Mestieri, performed in Japan in 2019; this concert, documented by two splendid audio / video boxes, will be replicated on the Rocca stage and will be one of the first times this has happened in Italy.
Friday 20 will be the turn of Sintonia Distorta, a Lodi band active for over two decades with some self-productions and two official albums, “Fragments of enchantment” and “A barefoot sull’arcobaleno”, released last year. With them, for some months, also the first bassist of Premiata Forneria Marconi, Giorgio “Fico” Piazza.
Then Paolo Faenza’s Semiramis will take to the stage, a band that has been active for a very short time and has only produced one album, “Dedicato a Frazz”. The formation included a very young Michele Zarrillo and the singer, author and producer Giampiero Artegiani. The Umbrian group “Il Bacio della Medusa. The band, with almost twenty years of career behind it, has been able to impose itself with a personal and always innovative language, never remaining firm on what was previously proposed. Together with them, for a truly intriguing guest, a great friend of the association, Lino Vairetti, leader of the Osanna. Together they will propose a song. Again on stage Lino Vairetti for the presentation, in exclusive national preview, of the book by Franco Vassia “The man of prog. On the notes of a sailing ship “.
Saturday the day will begin in the afternoon, in fact at 17:30 in the hall of the Theater of Palazzo della Corgna there will be the screening of the docufilm “Osannaples”, dedicated to the Neapolitan group which will be attended by the director M Deborah Farina and Lino Vairetti. The Genoese Il Segno del Comando will then take the stage. Diego Banchero’s formation was born in 1995 and can be classified in the dark prog genre. The first and self-titled album saw the light in 1997 while the second, Der golem, five years later. At this point a long stop of about ten years and the return with The Green Face in 2013. Still the live in the studio … To the past, to the present, to the future, and in 2015 the last work, L’incanto dello zero.
Space then for the Trasimeno Chamber Orchestra which will perform a suite specially written by Maestro Giuseppe Bruni dedicated to Dante’s canticles as interpreted by the Roman group of Metamorphoses, which will be joined by Lino Vairetti, for a small tribute to a great musician who recently passed away, Franco Battiato.
Finally, on Sunday 22nd it will be opened by La Cruna del Lago, a recently formed group, composed for ¾ of former musicians from Il Rovescio della Medaglia, who are completing the recordings of their first album, which promises to be interesting, making its absolute debut.
Another mega surprise of the evening was the presence on stage of the youngest of the Nocenzi brothers, Gianni, who will give a performance to the audience, while it will end with the group of the other brother, Vittorio, Il Banco del Mutuo Soccorso. Despite the death of the frontman Francesco Di Giacomo from the unmistakable vocal timbre and of the guitarist Rodolfo Maltese. Despite this Vittorio Nocenzi has found the strength to continue, also pushed by the fans, assembling a completely new line-up, with the exception of the guitarist Filippo Marcheggiani, who has been alongside the leader for about five decades. 2019 was very dense; the album Transiberiana was released, then the contract with the German label Inside Out and the live return, blocked by the pandemic.
The group, which will celebrate 50 years of career in 2022, resumed performing almost two months ago and arrives on the festival stage to conclude the prog rock marathon on the shore of Lake Trasimeno.
All musical evenings will start at 20:30.
During the four days of the event, the 1st Disco Fair will also take place, in the square adjacent to the Rocca, with numerous stands full of vinyls and CDs.
To access the concerts, according to recent provisions, it will be necessary to present the green pass or a negative swab taken no more than 48 hours ago.
For all information, visit the association’s website, www.trasimenoprog.com or the following link: https://trasimenoprog.eventbrite.it/.