The Top 3 Italian Festivals To Attend This Year
Italy has announced the official dates of some of it’s most popular festivals this year…
The Top 3 Italian Festivals To Attend This Year
Italy has announced the official dates of some of it’s most popular festivals this year. While we highly encourage experiencing this beautiful country at any time of the year, we’d like to introduce a few festivals that would be worth planning a trip around!
Verona In Love
Photo: travelhouse
The Valentines Day In Verona, Veneto could be the most romantic in the world. From the 11th-14th of February, the setting of Romeo and Juliet, will be holding a celebration of romance with its streets and squares filled with live concerts and markets. Now in its 15th year, the famous festival of St Valentine’s Day will illuminate the most charming views of the city including the famous Juliet's balcony, Piazza dei Signori, the Lamberti Tower, the Old Market Courtyard. Hotels near the festivities book up quickly, so if you’re planning on making the trip, be sure to act sooner than later!
Ciliegi In Fiore
Typically when cherry blossom festivals are mentioned, Japan would be the obvious option. For Americans, New York has become a popular destination to view the beautiful blossoms. However, Vigona, Emilia Romagna is famous for its cherry trees, and if you’re a fan of cherry blossom then you’ll want to visit in late March or early April as the trees bloom. In recent years, the cherry crop has suffered badly from excess rain, and screens have been put up to protect the trees, however they will be open for display during the festival. The town hosts a variety of parades, concerts, exhibitions, special restaurant menus and various other activities to enjoy surrounding the blooming season, and it is not a sight that should be overlooked.
Mille Miglia
From May 15th - 18th in Brescia Rome, you can enjoy the most exciting race in Europe at Mille Miglia (Thousand Miles). The long-running race attracts a plethora of vintage car lovers to Italy every year. A selection of vintage cars travel no-stop from Brescia to Rome and back, with crowds greeting them at numerous Italian towns along the way. ) Originially, it was an open-road, motorsport endurance race which took place from 1927 to 1957 and brought out an estimated five million spectators. From 1953 until 1957, the Mille Miglia was also a round of the World Sports Car Championship.
Since 1977, the "Mille Miglia" has been reborn as a regularity race for classic and vintage cars. The route (Brescia–Rome round trip) is similar to that of the original race with the point of departure/arrival in Viale Venezia in Brescia.
We hope you’ve enjoyed learning about The Top 3 Italian Festivals To Attend This Year! If you’re planning on making the trip, our culturally immersive group classes and native instructors can help make sure you’re able to enjoy the festivities to the fullest! Click below to learn more.
Monopolizing Music
Italian song rights collecting organization, SIAE has been ordered to seek out and resolve monopoly-related issues by Italy’s Competition Authority to end market distortion tactics…
Monopolizing Music
Italian song rights collecting organization, SIAE has been ordered to seek out and resolve monopoly-related issues by Italy’s Competition Authority to end market distortion tactics.
Collective licensing (where music rights owners license as one through a collecting society) always raises monopoly concerns. How those monopoly concerns are dealt with by copyright or competition law varies hugely from country to country. In the U.S., the 2 largest rights holders: BMI and ASCAP are regulated, while in the UK collective licensing is subject to the intervention of the copyright tribunal. In most European countries, however, regulation of licensing has traditionally been much less formal and severe.
The European Union has sought to make the European collecting societies more competitive, both in terms of recruiting members and licensing rights. Responding to those moves within the EU, Italy changed its laws last year to encourage more competition in the licensing market. This has created a dispute between SIAE and two newer licensing organizations called Soundreef and Innovaetica.
SIAE is charged with having used tactics to prohibit songwriters to choose additional organizations to represent them. Because of this, the ICA has demanded that the SIAE not only immediately comply but also pay a fine of 1000 euros.
SIAE has responded by stating that it would evaluate the Competition Authority’s order until they are confident that the organization was compliant with the laws in place despite the regulator’s demands.
We hope you’ve enjoyed learning about how the Italian Competition Authority is keeping SIAE from Monopolizing Music! Do you think this course of action will help aid Italian musicians in finding a royalty collector that works for them? Join the conversation below!
The World's Newest (Oldest) Guitar
Italian musician and designer Lorenzo Palmeri has designed the oldest guitar in the world…
The World's Newest (Oldest) Guitar
Italian musician and designer Lorenzo Palmeri has designed the "oldest guitar in the world.” It's made of ancient Kauri, a 50,000-year-old wood native to New Zealand.
Photo: Lorenzo Palmeri
The navel comes in three different designs. To create the limited edition guitar from Kauri wood, Palmeri collaborated with furniture maker and wood specialists, Riva1920, who helped him work with the 50,000 year old material.
Kauri wood comes from prehistoric Kauri trees which were buried and preserved in New Zealand’s North Island. Buried by a yet to be explained natural occurrence, the trees have survived for centuries underground which has preserved the timber in perfect condition.
All 3 guitars' designs are meant to contrast masculinity and femininity characterized by the round, 'feminine' form and 'masculine’ angularity. The guitars' designs are "meant to match its tones, which are capable of extending from very sweet to very powerful" says Palmeri.
Photo: Lorenzo Palmeri
The Kauri wood guitar is one of three new guitar models from Palmeri. Another of the models is made of Fenix NTM, a nanotech material featuring low-light reflectivity and an anti-fingerprint, soft-touch effect, and the final model is a classic guitar that is made from beech wood.
We hope you've enjoyed learning about The World's Newest (Oldest) Guitar! Want to learn more about all that is happening in Italian music? Click below to check out more articles from our Italian Culture Blog!
"KeepOn" Making Music
Two times every year, KeepOn hosts meetings that bring together musicians, bands and their fans to solve problems caused by changes in society and aims to spread high-quality Italian music…
KeepOn Making Music
A new association for Italian music venues, festivals, and promoters, KeepOn Live, has launched in Milan fronted by Marco Manzella , the founder of KeepOn. The organization was created in 2004 as a ‘cultural association’ for club-sized venues.
Manzella has stated that “After almost 14 years of networking activity, and the promotion and distribution of original Italian live music throughout the whole nation, venues, and festivals have [asked us] to create a sector association.” The association, he adds, is “independent, apolitical, nonpartisan and nondenominational”, and brings together “venues and [organizations] that organize live music”.
Two times every year, KeepOn hosts meetings that bring together musicians, bands and their fans to solve problems caused by changes in society and aims to spread high-quality Italian music. The organization has created “100% Best Live”, a ranking system voted by the artistic directors to select the best bands in their local area along with joint advertising and enter sponsorship agreements to support the economies and promote the music venues of the association.
Federico Rasetti, CEO, and vice-president of KeepOn Live has stated: “It will be a really representative association, which will group exclusively live musical professionals and develop around their directives, demands, and needs. It will be inclusive and qualifying, also welcoming those small companies that wish to grow in this sector, helping them to develop and strengthen.”
We hope you've enjoyed learning about how KeepOn is working to make sure Italians KeepOn Making Music! Would you be interested in seeing something like this in the United States? Join the conversation below!