Paolo Presta - Ibridanze (2024)

Produced by Dodicilune, distributed in Italy and abroad by IRD and in major online stores by BELIEVE DIGITAL, Tuesday 18 June sees the release of ‘Ibridanze‘, the new recording project by Calabrian accordionist and accordionist Paolo Presta. In the disc’s nine original tracks, he is joined, without ever going beyond the duo formation, by Federica Greco on vocals, Gianluca Bennardo on trombone, Antonio De Paoli on violin, Massimo Garritano on electric guitar, Dario Della Rossa on piano, and Francesco Magarò on traditional and ethnic percussion.

“This album is a selection of some musical ideas that I have put in the drawer over the last few years. A drawer that I have opened from time to time to store new ones or to work on those that were already there waiting impatiently to come out. I believe it is a natural, spontaneous need, rooted in graffiti and cave paintings that are lost in the mists of time: to leave a mark, a trace, or rather 9 traces, in which I have given free rein to my creativity. A self-analysis reveals a certain restlessness when listening, due to frequent sudden changes… I am sailing on a calm sea, where a gentle breeze reassures me; the straw hat that delicately protects me from the sun flies away, and a storm appears before my eyes! The woman I love, who until a moment before was with me on the boat is no longer there. Will she have fallen into the water? Will she be drowning? I dive in, struggle to the point of exhaustion… she wakes me up, with a kiss. I am on the seashore, the bad is over, it is time to go up to the village through “flowering valleys, where the olive tree embraces the vine”, centuries-old woods that not even the old raven, now over a thousand years old, can dominate. I lose myself in beauty. The nymphs that inhabit those places lead me to the edge of the forest from where the small village can be glimpsed. The circus troupe from the Balkans is already putting on a show, friends welcome me to the big table, we are all happy and conflicted but it is not over, it has yet to begin. The dances begin! The dances, yes, because it is not just one but many, they are different, they come together to form a single dance that is not a tango, it is not a tarantella, it is a hybrid. But they are dances. Hybridities.” Paolo Presta