Music Aperitivo: Giacomo Merega on Italo Calvino

TICKETED EVENT.

Join us at Rizzoli Bookstore on Sunday, March 22 at 4:30pm for an unforgettable evening of innovative jazz inspired by Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities.

Italo Calvino’s 1972 masterpiece novel Invisible Cities (Le cittá invisibili) is a catalog of imaginary cities described by Marco Polo to Kublai Khan. It’s a highly poetic and multilayered book in which architecture becomes a metaphorical manifestation of how dreams, memory, language, signs and trades inform the space we live as well as our interactions in said space. Each city is succinctly presented like an enigma and the dialogue between Polo and the Khan unravels like an oneiric game of chess, filled with images and still highly abstract.

In this performance, a reader (Andrew Fenlon) introduces a selection of Invisible Cities and the trio consisting of Giacomo Merega (bass guitar), Ned Rothenberg (reeds), and Terry McManus (guitar) improvises vignettes inspired by the many images and signifiers offered by this magnificent book.

PLEASE NOTE: This is a TICKETED EVENT. Doors open at 4:30 pm / show starts at 5:00 pm. Seating is limited and will be first come, first served.

Tickets include a 15% store discount which can be used the day of the concert, and a complimentary glass of wine provided by Field Blend Selections.

RIZZOLI MUSIC APERITIVO

From Francis Scott Fitzgerald to Jack Kerouac, from Toni Morrison to James Baldwin, from Philip Michael Ondaatje to Geoff Dyer, from Julio Cortazar to Boris Vian, from Amiri Baraka and Ishmael Reed to Jayne Cortez, the list of international writers and poets inspired or intrigued by jazz and other musical genres goes on. Since New York City’s Rizzoli Bookstore has a long tradition of building bridges between arts genres, international scenes, and creative people, we wanted to turn our gorgeous space in NoMad into an experimental living room where live jazz and other music can be enjoyed. The Rizzoli Music Aperitivo is sponsored by Field Blend Selections and is curated by Mondo Jazz, the weekly Radio Free Brooklyn show dedicated to international jazz

MONDO JAZZ

Mondo Jazz is a weekly program on Radio Free Brooklyn dedicated to the proposition that jazz is an international language. It is hosted every Wednesday night from 10 PM to midnight and Thursday morning from 8 to 10 AM, by Ludovico Granvassu, the founder and editor in chief of All About Jazz Italia. All archived episodes are available .

FIELD BLEND SELECTIONS

Founded in January 2017, Field Blend Selections is a new wine importing and distribution company based in New York City, serving the New York and New Jersey markets.

In both name and practice, Field Blend Selections celebrates agricultural traditions and diversity. The name is an homage to the nineteenth-century immigrants who co-planted an assortment of grape varieties in vineyards throughout the United States, many of which survive today. Alongside their vines, they often co-planted other crops, including fruits, grains, and legumes. This approach of co-mingling various plantings to achieve balance in the vineyards is now referred to as polyculture, and it is widely recognized as one of the best methods for naturally enriching soils and reducing disease. Polyculture, by replicating nature’s diverse ecosystems, produces healthier fruit without the necessity of artificial herbicides or pesticides.

Italo Calvino's beloved, intricately crafted philosophical novel about an Emperor's travels—a brilliant journey across far-off places and distant memory.
“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.”

In a garden sits the aged Kublai Khan and the young Marco Polo. Kublai Khan has sensed the end of his empire coming soon. Marco Polo diverts his host with stories of the cities he has seen in his travels around the empire: cities and memory, cities and desire, cities and designs, cities and the dead, cities and the sky, trading cities, hidden cities. As Marco Polo unspools his tales, the emperor detects these fantastic places are more than they appear.

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