Vitala Festival
The Rome based Vitala Festival looks ahead to its 8th concert season with a crowdfunding initiative
Il Vitala Festival di Roma guarda avanti all'ottava stagione concertistica con un'iniziativa di crowdfunding.
The Vitala Festival, as the name suggests, is a vibrant Rome based concert season which, for the last 7 years has been offering audiences an eclectic mix of music in a theatre setting.
The festival was founded by Fabiana De Rose, in collaboration with the San Genesio Theatre in Rome's Prati district, and has seen more than 150 artists perform their own brand of music.
Fabiana recalls that she was working in English language theatre at the venue when "a number of fortunate events" gave rise to the festival's initial beginnings.
What started out as a limited number of concerts, with an ethnic vibe, has now snowballed into an annual music fest featuring up to 20 performance dates from September through to June.
With many concerts taking place in pubs and clubs in the Eternal City, Fabiana says that, what the Vitala Festival wanted to offer from the outset was a different kind of location, that is, going back to the way concerts used to be staged in the 1960's and 70's in theatrical venues.
There's no doubt that with the diversity of music on offer, the festival has a distinctly international feel and, as well as Italian performers, foreign artists have taken to the stage with music from their own countries.
"We try to include various genres offering variety for the audience", Fabiana explains, adding that the festival is eager to have as many different styles of music as possible ranging from pop, jazz, tango, soul, and blues, to gospel and musical theatre.
She's keen to stress that, this mix of music and artists "is very important for us because the idea is also that through music you can promote cultural integration and this is so important in today's world."
What Fabiana says she would like to see, are the arts in general serving a double purpose. "The visual arts can communicate so much", she notes, which is why the Vitala Festival has already dedicated at least two visual art exhibitions to social causes.
One of those is an exposition of photography, texts and drawings entitled, "The Gazelles of Silvana" currently showing in the foyer of San Genesio and dedicated to a project called "Passy's Kids" in eastern Congo. Proceeds from this exhibition will go towards helping vulnerable children and the orphanage that cares for them.
A buzz word in recent years has been the practice of "crowdfunding" which is a way of raising capital through the effort of friends, family, donors, and individual investors. The festival has come a long way, but Fabiana says that raising funds "can help us to do more". For instance, with a higher budget, they would like to increase the number of concert dates and bring over more foreign artists.
This is the first year that the festival has launched such a campaign, which runs to the end of June, but as Fabiana points out, being able to cover production costs would "start the season on a high note."
The 8th season of the Vitala Festival gets underway on September 14th and more information on the crowdfunding initiative can be found at https://igg.me/at/vitalafestival
Lydia O'Kane
Photo Credits: Fabio Barilari
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