Ivory Coast: pianist Silvia Belfiore in concert

As part of the ‘Italy, Cultures, Africa’ initiative and of the 19th edition of the Italian Language Week, a concert by pianist Silvia Belfiore was organised in Abidjan by the Italian Embassy. The performance of music pieces was interspersed with the reading of texts by Italian and African authors to highlight the synergies between Italian and Ivorian cultures. Moreover, many of the pieces were performed in a duet with a local player of the tam-tam, a percussion instrument typical of the area. Silvia Belfiore graduated in piano from the Conservatory of Alessandria and has been devoting the last few years to performing contemporary African art music which she successfully played in more than 500 concerts in different Countries around the world. The texts that were read during the performance reflected the theme of this year’s edition of the Italian Language Week, “Italian on Stage”, and were drawn from works by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Sollima Beri,Leopold Sedar Senghor and Bernard Dadie’, a major representative of Ivorian literature who recently died. The excerpts were read by actress Naky Sy Savane’, a well-known face of African cinema, and by Ruth Tafe’be’, a composer and singer and an eminent figure in the Ivorian music scene.