Malika Ayane, Night Symphonies: "A New Life to My Songs"

It is a 'homecoming', to use her words, the concert (sold out) that Malika Ayane will hold this evening at the Pavaglione in Lugo (9:30 p.m.), accompanied by the Orchestra La Corelli, conducted by Daniele Parziani, within the Ravenna Festival. With the songs of her vast repertoire wrapped in unreleased arrangements, the result of a meeting strongly desired by the Festival and preceded by two days of intense rehearsals.

Mrs. Ayane, this is the festival where Maestro Muti recently conducted a choir of 3000 people.

"Precisely for this reason, being here, within a program where Muti's name stands out in such a decisive way, is a point of arrival in my career. Usually artists live everything frenetically and, whatever activity they do, they always think about what comes next. I, on the other hand, want to enjoy this moment, go up on stage, hear the conductor who moves in unison with the orchestra, sing, as if individual individuals did not exist, but we were a single, changing organism".

She spoke about this concert as a 'homecoming'.

"That's exactly right, and you can imagine, in terms of emotional factors, what this means. I grew up artistically, but also humanly, inside the Teatro alla Scala and I absorbed the emotions that permeate it in every corner, those of an incredible story that I found myself in the presence of. I sang in the children's choir and the most awaited moment was the end-of-year concert, when we little ones were on the same stage with the adult choir. Maestro Muti was the musical director of the Theater in those years. And now I play with an extraordinary orchestra in the same Festival that hosts his great productions".

What kind of concert will it be?

"Unique. With the conductor, we opened the drawers to look for the songs that would best adapt to a symphonic performance: we literally dismantled them, deconstructed them and then reconstructed them to highlight the parts to be entrusted to the individual sections of the ensemble. Also playing with the arrangements, experimenting; for example, replacing the themes originally entrusted to the brass with others performed by the strings. The real protagonist will be the orchestra. With the conductor, Maestro Daniele Parziani, the harmony is absolute".

How did you choose the songs?

"For me it was an opportunity to really look closely at the songs I've performed over time, and this, as if I were preparing a retrospective, made me discover different aspects, on which I had never focused my attention. And even the songs with a more traditional pace, the more 'pop' ones, revealed themselves to me in a different light, as if they were already small symphonies. I gave priority to them".

How would you define what we will hear this evening in Lugo?

"A tangle of emotions in a symphonic key, a reinterpretation of many songs, from the most famous to those I rarely sing, as if they were remixed live thanks to the virtuosos of the Orchestra La Corelli".