The Italian Renaissance was an extraordinarily creative period in all areas of knowledge. Music and dance belonged to a season of incredible richness in which all the great masterpieces followed one after another in a fascinating and astonishing rise in all the town courts poets, painters, sculptors, musicians, and dancers gave life and movement to an ever-changing society. Although dance was prohibited in medieval times, it, was later considered a moral activity of educational merit and was thus treated as a refined and elegant art with a precise written form. Festivities were the natural context for dance, a complex cast of movement often reflecting ceremonial celebrations of the royalty (engagement, wedding, birth, battle victory etc... all Renaissance court activity). On the present release, the ensemble La Rossignol explores dance tunes by Renaissance composers.

The musicians of La Rossignol write of their impetus to record this album: "At the and of a concert with music and dances of the Italian Renaissance, given in a large capital city abroad, some illustrious ladies approached us and told us that, after what they had seen and heard, they had felt '... a great desire to visit Italy to see the places where this music had been conceived, sung, played and danced... ' By itself, this motivation could justify the effort needed to record an album, quite apart from the history, the philology, the study of old instruments and all the rest." La Rossignol is an ensemble that specializes in Early music and dance. Their performances are exciting and entertaining, and above all true to the performance practices of pre-classical musicmaking.

The program proposes some songs dedicated to the rose in its various symbolic aspects in XIII and XIV sec. The release's title is the beginning of one of the most famous Cantigas de Santa Maria, which proposes the main rose medieval allegory as an image of Virgo, also used to represent many holy concerts. Many values found a metaphor in the rose. This work stresses the universality of a symbol that inspired secular, religious and music literature all around Europe, and it found equal citizenship in three great cultures, the Hebrew, Christian and Islamic ones, that stood out the medieval occident. The group Chominciamento di Gioia is among the most important in Italy for the performance of early repertoire, note their collaboration with Angelo Branduardi in the realisation of his project "Futuro Antico".

“Alla piffaresca, musica rinascimentale per strumenti alti,” presents a rich musical corpus, in which the ancient "pifari" are the perfect instrument to create the typical climax of Renaissance- open parties, and noble and popular festivals. With a main office in Soresina, La Rossignol is a society between artists and researchers that wishes to promote, to produce and to diffuse some initiatives with the goal of the spread of ancient music. Using a study of direct and indirect sources, musicological researches, historical, organological and iconographical investigations, particular attention to the spectacular side of their own work led the members of the group, since 1987, to an active artistic career in Italy, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, France, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Russia, India, China, Japan, Rumania, Cyprus, Espana, Syria, Lebanon, Moroc. Among the prestigious festivals in which they’ve performed we can remember above all Autunno Musicale in Como, International Venice Festival, Recitarcantando, le Colombiadi in Genova, le Settimane musicali in Ascona, il Carnevale di Venezia, and the International Reinaissance Festival of Israel.

In this time of philological research about executive and instrumental typologies of Renaissance of Baroque, is timely the production of Mandolino nel Novecento, that is a Neapolitan mandolino having four iron strings. The question is: what can we play with this instrument? The ensemble Mereuer proposes two solutions: the first one is the transcription (Debussy, Piazzolla, Katchaturian), so they continue the tradition of early twentieth century in which the performance was the only way to know these songs with the plectrum group. The other one is the performance of musical pieces with the compositions of Angulo and Mereu, but most of all the ''Serenata Passacaglia'' that Ennio Morricone has composed for the Ensemble.

Composer and saxophonist Nicola Alesini is one of the most prominent new sounders in the rhythms and melodies of the Mediterranean tradition. In his music, always open to the whole universe of the language of art, there is a meeting and mingling of jazz and popular music, ambient and world music. Visionary, magical, and suggestive are the stylistic figures of his compositions and his sometimes lyrical, sometimes scratching phrasing. He has worked with musicians such as Glen Velez, Hans Joachim Roedelius, David Sylvian, Roger Eno, David Thorn, Harold Budd, Steve Jansen, and Richard Barbieri. This new release is a concept album based on the book “Invisible Cities” by Italo Calvino, and is a journey in the imagination of the composer where “impressions” and “memories” become sound. A symphony of saxophones, popular clarinet, bass clarinet, and keyboards is heard here. “Totally unreal places, wonderfully without time nor space. And, once again, packed with music that knows how to scratch the soul with velvet nails.”

The rose, as it already was during the Middle Ages, continues to be one of the symbolic images of Renaissance civility. Its different values have persisted for ages: the religious one (the rose symbolizing the Madonna/Mother Mary, image of absolute pureness), the profane one (as a personification of the beloved one) and the esoteric one (symbol of resurrection, immortality, regeneration). This release, recorded live in a fifth century church in Santa Maria in Bressanoro in Castelleone, creates particularly varied and rich atmospheres: the compositions of great authors like Dunstable, Ciconia, Frescobaldi and Monteverdi meet in an aesthetical rather than in a chronological order. They melt together with the very direct, popular versions of devotional praise-songs of Dammonis and, singing and dancing to them, they celebrate the spring awakening of all senses and of passion, as if on a happy trip toward a new sense of harmony, toward the perfection of music, in a period when music still contributes to the great evolution of thought.

The singer-songwriter musician Rino Farruggio seems to connect, sometimes in a daring way and perhaps even creates a kind of peace. Here we experience the simple song of the children alongside the most elaborate songs of adults. Farruggio brings the classic Christmas tunes to life, reviving them and referencing his unique creativity. Natale della gente, a song that has daring melodies and lyrics that continue the gospel mystery and narrative.