In Ferrara I used to sing in Coro Polifonico “Santo Spirito”, where we performed mostly baroque sacred music. I was very proud of that hobby, that allowed me to sing in prestigious theaters together with famed orchestras and world-class directors. Unfortunately when I moved to Florence I had to give up on this activity and I missed it a lot.   I tried to look for something similar in my new location but couldn’t find anything that matched my time budget and my taste.

For three long years Caterina tried to have me join The Pilgrims, a gospel choir.  I went to see one of their concerts and I liked it but, you know, jumping from Mozart’s Requiem to Happy Days is a big leap and I didn’t feel like I could do it.  Luckily enough, a few months ago Caterina eventually convinced me to give it a try and… it’s great!  I ended up joining their group – so now I am a Pilgrim – and already performed in five concerts!

What makes The Pilgrims great is not the songs we sing, even if there are some really good.  It’s not the musical skills, even if we sing everything by heart and the soloists have amazing voices.  It’s not the red tunic and the choreography we make dancing on the stage.  What makes it great are the choir members.  They are very energetic, friendly, inclusive and I have lots of fun with them!  And when you have fun performing the attendance has fun as well, which by the way is the goal of our performances.

I’m very thankful to Caterina for all the fun and the emotions I got in the concerts and for everything else that will come!  Damn, if only I joined them three years ago…

Last Tuesday night I attended a concert where Maggio Musicale Orchestra played Beethoven’s 9th Symphony directed by Zubin Mehta.  The concert was in Piazza della Signoria and was for free, so it was packed.  It was a very hot night but despite the sense of suffocation I was glad to be there cause the concert has been great.

After some initial synchronization problem – in the first movement where the orchestra wasn’t carefully following the director – they quickly knitted their sound and made an awesome ensemble.  I was particularly impressed by the sharpness of pizzicatos in the third movement.  Then in the fourth movement when the solo bass started to sing he took my breath away.  His voice was so powerful and determined that the walls surrounding the square vibrated and my skin was blown away.  The tenor, alto, soprano and the 100-people choir were also remarkably good while singing Ode to Joy, the amazing melody which is also famous for being the basis of the European Anthem.  As soon as the finale was over, every body stood up to clap their hands in a long ovation.

Of course, this wonderful music is even better when you listen to it in this open air space right the middle of Palazzo Vecchio, Loggia dei Lanzi, Michelangelo’s David and Uffizi.  I’m glad to live 10 minutes walk from there and it’s this kind of nights that make me glad the most.

A new tradition has been established in Ferrara lately.  Every year we celebrate the new summer with a city-wide night party thrown on the solstice day.  In yesterday’s edition I attended a wonderful fireworks show where music and light synchronized together built a moving synesthetic show.  Fireworks went on for about 45 minutes, with a sequence of several songs, each one with a different choreography.

Meanwhile, every corner in the city center had some entertaining event to offer: museums exceptionally opened till late, theater and live art performances, open air mega-screens running movies and the football match of the European championship, several concerts of all sorts of music, free salame with ciupeta bread, card games tournaments and more.  The city center was packed till at least 2am.

After the fireworks we’ve attended a theater show by Teatro Comunitario Pontelagoscuro, a grass-root show created by the citizens of Pontelagoscuro and the help of Teatro Nucleo, talking about the dramatic history of that place in the 20th Century.  It impressive how professional is the result achieved by the will of a few dozen normal people getting together to act in their spare time.

Last weekend we celebrated the bachelor party for one of our friends. People usually organize late-at-night bachelor parties in dancing places, but we picked him up at his home Sunday morning at 8:30am, saying we had to drive a long way before getting to the place. He was then blindfolded, confused with earphones and loud music and brought in the countryside a few minutes out of the city center where half a dozen warriors were waiting for us, all dressed up in military camouflage, guns and all sorts of strange equipment.

The guys looked like real professionals while they tied to a tree our unaware friend. One of them was actually a lady and she started to talk equivocally to him, who at this point was severely puzzled and beginning to sweat. She then abruptly took out the blindfold and he instantly found himself right in front of an unfriendly berserker wearing a Friday 13th mask, screaming like crazy and ordering ready-set-fire to a firing-squad. The squad shot for real, a few dozen bullets. Of course they were innocent small plastic bullets, 6mm diameter, a quarter gram, but our friend was shocked none the less. After a few seconds he got what happened and cursed at us, who were laughing it up. Now that’s a surprise!

We were in a softair camp. Softair is a battle simulation with fake guns shooting small plastic balls by way of an electric air pump. Those guns are actual size and weight and look very similar to the real thing. When you get hit but one of those bullets it hurts a little and you instantly scream “stop it!”. Of course you need special glasses and/or mask to protect your eyes, cause bullets would be dangerous if they hit you there. It turns out the guys meet there every Sunday morning to play fake fights and even make tournaments with nearby clubs.

Of course we took the opportunity to play with them. They lent us guns and we split in two squads, fighting a few capture the flag matches. The playing field was a former motocross track, with plenty of dunes, trenches, wooden ramps and enough trees and bushes to hide behind. After a few hours I had mud everywhere but it’s been lots of fun. Finally, we changed our dress and moved to a nearby trattoria where we had meat and wine until everybody was stuffed.  What a day!

Between a movie and the next one you can sunbath on the grass in front of the theater or sit at the internal cafè. Here at the FEFF in the middle of the crowd it happens strangers will sit at your table and you suddenly find yourself doing conversation in a casual group of half a dozen people, one from Beijing, one from Klagenfürt, one from Udine, one from Villach. You can feel like you are in a global melting (G-s)pot, and that’s not just for cinephiles.

So once again I’m attending the Far East Film Festival in Udine. This year they run 8 movies a day and there’s practically no pause to eat. If you want to miss nothing you need a catheter Yesterday I got two autographs from NAKATA Hideo (director of Death Note movies) and YAMAZAKI Takashi (director of Always Sunset On Third Street). Stay tuned.

Few days ago I’ve been at the Madison Square Garden, arguably the world’s most famous arena. New yorkers simply call it The Garden, as if it were the only garden out there, or worse, as if it were a garden at all! Well, actually it’s not even on Madison Square. Thanks to wikipedia I discovered the current name is just a legacy from the original arena, that one century ago used to be located in a garden at Madison Square.  Anyhow entering the arena is impressive: you feel like getting into a temple, a place where people go to worship their idols. Oh wait, that’s exactly what they do there!

The show on stage was a basketball match in the College Hoops league, between St. John’s and Pittsburgh. I went with Carla, a friend from New York. She likes college basketball and taught me all I had to know and something more, e.g. that college teams usually have the name of an animal (Pittsburgh Panthers) but St. John’s is an exception (they call themselves the Red Storm). We took the obligatory beer (that they served us with a built-in pretzel) and brought it in.

Before the match started an actual singer sung the national anthem, everybody standing, hats off. Pitts were much stronger and they easily blew out St. John’s 81-57, but it’s been fun anyway. The home team had cheerleaders, dancers and a fanfare band and shot t-shirts to the public during time-outs. Much fun!

Too bad I’m already back to Italy.

Cooking is hard stuff. There are recipes out there that would take advantage of project management methods. Take for example Cappelletti in brodo, a soup you can have in Emilia Romagna. To make it you have to prepare a broth with beef, chicken, pork sausage and vegetables, than save the broth for later and grind the meat together with parmigiano cheese, some grated bread and a little nutmeg until you have a uniform compound. Then, you make a mixture with flour and eggs, stirring until you get a compact and dry but still soft yellow bowl of dough. Then you make it flat with a rolling pin and cut it in squares 4-5cm wide. Then you put a small take of meat compound in each square, bend it and close it with a clever usage of your fingers, in the typical cappelletti shape. Then you make it rest for 8 hours, to make it dry and solid. Finally, you cook it in the original broth. Since recipes like this can easily keep you busy for a couple days, you should better get organized…

This was taken last September at the Ferrara Balloons Festival.  There were many huge balloons, some of them with crazy shapes.  You could even buy a ticket to ride one.  An interesting thing: I discovered balloons are better flown in the morning or in late afternoon, apparently because the hottest and coldest hours make navigation harder.

Last time I’ve been in New York, one night Ale brought us to Ludlow Street. Ale is a fan of Lower East Side, and I definitely approve his taste. That area is filled with strange and interesting places, for both dining and having fun. That night Ale brought us first to the Back Room (which I already knew, maybe I’ll talk about this in a different post) and then to Mehanata, a Bulgarian bar and dance floor.

You have to know it in advance, cause there’s no hint from outside. No name on the street, just a small door no different to an normal entrance to apartments. When you’re in, you find yourself in a bar room, brick-and-stone raw walls, amazing psychedelic lights, high-tech but retro at the same time. Do you remember those mirror spheres that were so common in the 70s? Same concept but made with LEDs, or maybe Lasers. Strange bottles are aligned behind the barman and people left Cyrillic messages on the restroom walls.

Downstairs, a crowded improvised dance floor with a DJ playing Balkan-punk-folk-gipsy-rock-ish stuff and people dancing like crazy, not the least afraid to show everybody their hormonal level, girls included. On the lower bar a board says “Get naked, get a free shot” and I guess somebody actually does every now and then. Everybody knows the songs they’re playing (unbelievable), so they sing out loud while dancing. It looks like one of the resident DJs, probably the local hero, is Eugene Hütz (the man in the picture), which by the way is Alex in Everything Is Illuminated.

As a girl told me, the place is “totally unpretentious” and you feel like you could do anything, like you shouldn’t care about what people think of you. You just get in the flow, dancing and screaming and teasing girls and having huge quantity of fun! Thank you Ale!