| B i o g r a p h y |
Rondò Veneziano
is an Italian chamber orchestra, specializing in Baroque music, playing
original instruments, but incorporating a rock-style rhythm section of
synthesizer, bass guitar and drums, led by Maestro Gian Piero
Reverberi. The unusual addition of modern instruments, more suitable
for Jazz, combined with Reverberi's arrangements and original
compositions, have resulted in lavish novel versions of classical works
over the years. As a rule in their concert tours, the musicians, mostly
women, add to the overall Baroque effect wearing Baroque-era attires
and coiffures.
The first decade of albums were entirely original compositions in
the style of the baroque rondò being "a musical composition built on
the alternation of a principal recurring theme and contrasting
episodes." In an interview Reverberi said on the sound of Rondò
Veneziano: "Rondò Veneziano's music is first of all positive. Also when
it seems to be sad, it's never sad. It's always positive in a sense
that at the end there's always a good future. So I think that also the
reason of the success it that it's music where you don't have to think
negative or to feel negative or if you feel negative it should be
something that brings you to think positive." In later years Rondò
Veneziano also brought their fusion of classical and contemporary
instruments to a number of albums dedicated to some of the great
composers of the classical and baroque tradition. A version of "La
Serenissima" (Theme From Venice in Peril) was released in the UK as a
single and reached number 58 in the UK Singles Chart in October 1983.
The track was also widely used at that time by BBC Television, as the
theme tune to Hospital Watch. The track was later to feature on the
globally successful Venice in Peril album which was released as part of
an international campaign to save Venice from sinking into the lagoon.
In 1985, they provided the score for the movie Not Quite Jerusalem
(known as Not Quite Paradise in the USA). This score was a reworking of
many of the original pieces featured on the Venice in Peril and The
Genius of Venice albums. The orchestra has produced 70 albums in the 29
years since its founding in 1979.