Peppe Voltarelli
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Southern Italian singer-songwriter, composer and actor Peppe Voltarelli will make his New York City concert debut on Wednesday November 11, 2009 at (Le) Poisson Rouge. Born in Italy’s Calabria region, the 40 year-old Voltarelli’s work is a modern Italian’s musical take on the diaspora of tight-knit Calabrian immigrant communities that continue to thrive throughout Europe and the Americas. At (Le) Poisson Rouge Voltarelli will offer a set drawn from his first solo album, 2007’s “Distratto ma però” (Distracted But However), a project which the Rome-based musician has supported with over 200 live shows in Italy and Europe, the results of which were released on his 2008 live album “Duisburg Nantes, Praga”. This New York appearance is part of Pan-American tour which will see Voltarelli perform for the first time in Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Toronto and Montreal.
New York filmgoers have already had the opportunity to see Peppe Voltarelli in a leading role in the 2006 mockumentary feature “La Vera Leggenda di Tony Villar” (The Real Legend of Tony Villar), which showed in official selection at the 2007 TriBeCa Film Festival. The semi-biographical plot follows the path of a contemporary Italian singer (Voltarelli), on the trail of a crooner from his Calabrian village (Villar), who found fame and fortune in 1960’s Argentina and eventually disappeared into anonymity in the Bronx’s Italian community along Arthur Avenue. Directed by fellow Calabrian Giuseppe Gagliardi, “La Vera Leggenda di Tony Vilar” will be screened on Tuesday November 10, 2009 at NYU’s Casa Italiana as a preview to Wednesday’s (Le) Poisson Rouge event. Voltarelli and Gagliardi previously collaborated on “Doichlanda”, a 2003 documentary about Italian immigration to Germany -- their ongoing music and film relationship producing numerous award winning video clips.
Peppe Voltarelli is a founding member of "Il Parto delle Nuvole Pesanti" (The Birth of the Heavy Clouds) one of Italy’s seminal bands of the 1990’s, whose style is a mix of rock and Calabrian folk traditions. Voltarelli’s path as a touring musician has lead him to collaborations with other cutting edge Italian artists exploring similar mixes of old world and new world sounds, such as the German-born Italian raised Vinicio Capossela, Sicilian Roy Paci (Manu Chao) and Neopolitan Daniele Sepe. The Calabrian musician has twice been recognized in Italy’s prestigious Tenco Prize event.
Voltarelli has also contributed music and text to Italy’s theatrical stage with a 2001 work on the life of Domenico Modugno, the multiple Grammy Award winning singer-songwriter who penned one of the most well known Italian popular songs in the world, 1958’s San Remo Festival winning "Nel blu dipinto di blu”, more commonly know as "Volare". Along with the Florence-based Krypton troupe, Voltarelli composed the original music for "Roccu u Stortu" (Rocco the Crooked), the anti-war saga of a Calabrian soldier’s desertion in WWI. An active pacifist, Voltarelli traveled to Iraq in 2003 to participate in a peace concert held in Bagdad’s Palestine Hotel, an account of which can be seen in the documentary "Sotto il cielo di Baghdad" (Under the Baghdad Sky). Voltarelli is also a published author with a collection poetry and songs in Calabrian dialect with English translation.
The opening act for Peppe Voltarelli’s (Le) Poisson Rouge date is the Montreal-based Italo-Canadian singer-songwriter Marco Calliari. The Calabrian-born, one time Latin American star, now based in New York, Tony Villar will make a special guest appearance in Peppe Voltarelli’s set.
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New York filmgoers have already had the opportunity to see Peppe Voltarelli in a leading role in the 2006 mockumentary feature “La Vera Leggenda di Tony Villar” (The Real Legend of Tony Villar), which showed in official selection at the 2007 TriBeCa Film Festival. The semi-biographical plot follows the path of a contemporary Italian singer (Voltarelli), on the trail of a crooner from his Calabrian village (Villar), who found fame and fortune in 1960’s Argentina and eventually disappeared into anonymity in the Bronx’s Italian community along Arthur Avenue. Directed by fellow Calabrian Giuseppe Gagliardi, “La Vera Leggenda di Tony Vilar” will be screened on Tuesday November 10, 2009 at NYU’s Casa Italiana as a preview to Wednesday’s (Le) Poisson Rouge event. Voltarelli and Gagliardi previously collaborated on “Doichlanda”, a 2003 documentary about Italian immigration to Germany -- their ongoing music and film relationship producing numerous award winning video clips.
Peppe Voltarelli is a founding member of "Il Parto delle Nuvole Pesanti" (The Birth of the Heavy Clouds) one of Italy’s seminal bands of the 1990’s, whose style is a mix of rock and Calabrian folk traditions. Voltarelli’s path as a touring musician has lead him to collaborations with other cutting edge Italian artists exploring similar mixes of old world and new world sounds, such as the German-born Italian raised Vinicio Capossela, Sicilian Roy Paci (Manu Chao) and Neopolitan Daniele Sepe. The Calabrian musician has twice been recognized in Italy’s prestigious Tenco Prize event.
Voltarelli has also contributed music and text to Italy’s theatrical stage with a 2001 work on the life of Domenico Modugno, the multiple Grammy Award winning singer-songwriter who penned one of the most well known Italian popular songs in the world, 1958’s San Remo Festival winning "Nel blu dipinto di blu”, more commonly know as "Volare". Along with the Florence-based Krypton troupe, Voltarelli composed the original music for "Roccu u Stortu" (Rocco the Crooked), the anti-war saga of a Calabrian soldier’s desertion in WWI. An active pacifist, Voltarelli traveled to Iraq in 2003 to participate in a peace concert held in Bagdad’s Palestine Hotel, an account of which can be seen in the documentary "Sotto il cielo di Baghdad" (Under the Baghdad Sky). Voltarelli is also a published author with a collection poetry and songs in Calabrian dialect with English translation.
The opening act for Peppe Voltarelli’s (Le) Poisson Rouge date is the Montreal-based Italo-Canadian singer-songwriter Marco Calliari. The Calabrian-born, one time Latin American star, now based in New York, Tony Villar will make a special guest appearance in Peppe Voltarelli’s set.