by Max Newman
If there’s one thing that the Ohio-based group Alla Boara can do, it is allowing their listeners to explore the past by relishing in the present. And for those who packed into the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium on Wednesday, January 24 for the ensemble’s performance celebrating the release of their new record, that is exactly what they got.
It was an evening of storytelling through word and song.
Bandleader Anthony Taddeo, the group’s composer and drummer, based his arrangements off of a series of Alan Lomax’s 1954 field recordings of Italian folk music. Throughout the night, Taddeo and other band members laid out historical context to the pieces on show with a backdrop of original images from Lomax’s Italian journey. It gave the audience a clear snapshot of Italy in the mid-1950s, and created an authentic atmosphere for each song played. [Read more…]
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