Buying tickets for future concerts, it is possible to provide financial aid to freelance artists who have not been able to work in the past year
In Naples, it is an old and established tradition. When paying for your coffee in a bar, you can ask for a “caffè sospeso.” It is a “pending coffee” that you pay for, but you don’t drink. It is a credit intended for a stranger who otherwise could not afford it. Anyone in need can enter the bar, ask if there is a “sospeso,” and enjoy a coffee on you. Starting from this tradition, the Bazzini Consort and its artistic director Aram Khacheh launched a new project called “Cartellone Sospeso” (Pending Program).
In this case, the idea of the “pending” is applied to an unusual context, that of music, creating a program of concerts with the names of performers, soloists, and conductors. The only details that are not yet indicated are dates, times. Through the cartellonesospeso.com website, the public can buy now the payment of tickets for concerts that will take place once it will be possible to perform live.
The Bazzini Consort and its artistic director Aram Khacheh launched a new project called “Cartellone Sospeso” (Pending Program)
For someone, playing is a life, a passion, but, above all, it is work. And during this year, they were deprived of this fundamental right. Laura Bergami, president of the Bazzini Consort, explained how many musicians work as freelancers. “Among them, there are many talented young people who, after years of study, entered the world of work and found themselves without sources of income,” she added. “For this category, the subsidies provided are very few (if at all available).” These artists, especially emerging ones, are now at a crossroad; having to meet the costs of daily life, many have to decide to abandon, probably forever, their career. Anticipating the payment of future performances and concerts guarantees some relief to those musicians whose income has been wiped out by the regulations put in place in the past year.
Many famous artists have already enthusiastically adhered to the project ensuring their availability to perform in the “pending concerts” and renouncing their compensation in favor of less fortunate colleagues. Just to name a few, conductors Umberto Benedetti Michelangeli and Antonello Allemandi, clarinettist Alessandro Carbonare, violinist Gabriele Bellu, cellists Giovanni Sollima and Giovanni Gnocchi, pianists Alessandro Lucchesini and Massimiliano Motterle, singers Annalisa Stroppa and Fabio Armiliato.
Ilona Catani Scarlett