Alter Bridge and Black Stone Cherry, Pordenone, October 26, 2011

Alter Bridge and Black Stone Cherry rip apart Pordenone’s Forum arena

America’s band Alter Bridge, together with opening act Black Stone Cherry, continued their musical devastation in Italy in the northern town of Pordenone, just after their Rome concert!

Black Stone Cherry played for nearly an hour and found it somewhat hard to leave the stage as fans were crying out for more. But with all respect for the great performance of this American band, the 2,000+ people after all didn’t come for them but for their fellow compatriots, Alter Bridge, a band that was formed in 2004 and which is currently made up of Creed’s drummer Scott Philipps, guitarist Mark Tremonti, bass guitarist Brian Marshall (an ex Creed member) and by Myles Kennedy on vocals, the ex singer of the band Mayfield Four who had his life changed forever when as a kid he had heard for the first time Queen’s We Will Rock You!

The Pordenone concert was brought to us thanks to the folks over at Azalea Promotion and was the last show for Alter Bridge in northern Italy, now at their eighth concert in the Bel Paese. And what a very, very loud concert it was too (perhaps just a wee bit too loud as distinguishing the tunes coming out of Marshall’s bass was a bit difficult at times. This was also the observation of some fans)! Nevertheless, die-hard rock fans won’t accept anything less decibel-wise (Deep Purple was once THE world’s loudest band, with some 100,000 decibels blaring out of their speakers!) and so Kennedy and his mates proceeded in knocking the socks off of fans who crowded the towns Forum arena, site of other memorable concerts such as Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant!

Slip To The Void opened the show and was followed by Metalingus, Watch Over You, Open Your Eyes and ended after nearly 2 hours with Rise Today. While perhaps not necessarily on the tip of everyone’s R&R tongue, Alter Bridge nevertheless had a very attentive following in Pordenone: many fans knew the band’s songs rather well and appeared to have been pleasantly bowled over with their very loud and high-energy brand of R&R!

The “Piccola Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio”, Rome, September 30th, 2011

Indeed a nice and rather pleasant performance by the “Piccola Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio” at Rome’s Teatro Olimpico. The idea for this multi-ethnic band came to Mario Tronco, the former keyboard player of “Avion Travel”, and a colleague of his. The two got the inspiration for the band from the multi-ethnic neighborhood of Rome known as the Esquilino, the area that also encompasses Piazza Vittorio (which is now mostly populated by Chinese stores).

The large orchestra, at the beginning known simply as the “Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio”, has been part of a film-documentary which has also been presented in the U.S. at the Trebeca Film Festival. The orchestra has so far performed some 300 times on five different continents. In 2005 it also won the “German Record Critics’ Award” for the World Music category.

Rome’s performance was instead a re-adaption of W.A. Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”. The many kids who were also on hand for the show no doubt enjoyed Tronco and Co.’s nice performance as well.