Florence blog

Florence is known for its history. Many people know the Renaissance and the monumental amount of classics that emerged from this magnificent city including: Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello and Dante. But Florence also embarks on modernity, and many attractions go beyond the traditional, while offering locals and tourists, many ways to enjoy the nightlife, contemporary art and current band concerts, among others.

Florence is also a city of students from all over the world, which makes its nightlife to be diverse and vibrant. Over the current sounds, clubs and bars are changing transmissions according to the interests of their young and giddy audience. Like other cities in Italy, fashion and style are part of everyday’s life, in this emerging youth scene, which is not afraid of taking risks with the most “hipster” of the moment, and fashionable sounds Pitchfork recommended. Bars, clubs and zones “underground” are at your disposal without exploring with some curiosity and enthusiasm.

You can spend whole nights traveling from cocktail to cocktail and from bar to bar, tasting tapas and food from the most exotic and diverse type. Unlike other European cities, spontaneity is a typical resource in Florence, it is not enough to make a safe plan on how to end the night, a target can lead to another and so unexpected you embark on an intense and colorful festival. Much information is at your disposal in bars and streets, from flyers, fanzines, posters, can be guided by the secret routes and modern Florence.

One of the classic places for concerts in Florence is the Palasport, where some of the most interesting bands of the moment are presented in spectacular concerts. People like Marilyn Manson, Eric Clapton, The Cranberries, The Cure, Bob Dylan, Iron Maiden, have offered concerts at this legendary concert place.

Among the most important clubs you can visit, there is the H202, where techno music is the daily bread. In the H202, you will find a very young community of local and international students who do not lose the opportunity to leave everything on the dance floor until four in the morning. Another inevitable choice of the night in Florence is the Meccano club, with two endless dance floors, ambient lighting and fanciful cocktails, this disco guarantees house music, techno and R & B. During the summer one of its tracks are outdoors, where you have access to a night of dancing fresh and inviting. The non-stop action continues on Tenax, another temple of techno and progressive house. In addition to huge dance floor, Tenax are some of the best alternative concerts in the city.

Alexa Ray

Get apartments in Florence and enjoy its young and modern scene. The clubs, bars and nightclubs are the best in Italy: party nights and endless action guaranteed.

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Translated by: Hans
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Amici della Musica in Florence

Florence is the capital of Tuscany, Italy, and it is known for its art and architecture, but it is also known for an exciting event that has existed since 1919: The Amici della Musica.

The History of the Amici della Musica

Since Florence felt the need to create a music center, the Amici della Musica was born in 1919. This association organizes concerts and cultural events. They are known for hosting very prestigious concerts both in Italy and abroad. The Amici della Musica features big names in the music industry. Oftentimes they include winners of different competitions. Originally the association intended to only host events for a select audience. As time passed by, however, they felt the need to cater to wider audiences in order to increase the number of those who appreciate classical music.

The Main Event

Starting this October 2011, The Amici della Musica will be holding concerts. The season is entitled Friends of Music. Lists of concerts were already lined up to serve visitors and locals with a taste for classical music. Starting in October 2011 and lasting until the month of April 2012, the grounds of Amici della Musica will be filled with music and music lovers. This event has been greatly anticipated by a lot of people who are thirsty for high quality classical music.

Amici della Musica and Its Composition

Amici della Musica has an ensemble that gives concerts in different formats. The ensemble is led by director Claudio Rastelli. It also includes other founding members such as Gabriele Betti, Paçalin Zef Pavaci, and Paolo Vergari. All driven by the love of music, these talented musicians were gathered in order to deliver great music and outstanding concerts.

Those who want to have an evening full of relaxing classical music should not miss the Amici della Musica in Florence. The whole month of November through the month of April will give you an opportunity to enjoy this amazing musical event in Italy. Your accommodations in Florence will allow you to enjoy breathtaking views of Florence and an event that will make your night even more romantic than what you originally planned.

D. Laney

Your apartments in Florence will be even more delightful when you take the time to enjoy Amici della Musica. Music lovers everywhere will enjoy the remarkable concerts at this event. Make time to relax in Florence by attending.

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In an interview in 1988, Leonard Cohen made one of the most intelligent approaches to the figure of Bob Dylan- artist who will perform at Nelson Mandela Forum in Florence (http://www.mandelaforum.it/notizie.php?ID=483 ) next 11^th of November – that has been done before. In it, he compared the music and the paint worlds to conclude on one hand that his genius mind and the importance of his work can only be compared to those of Picasso (with respect to the exuberance of his talent, the wide spectrum covered by this unique, colossal, almost monstrous assimilative capacity of the legacy of the entire history of art) and on the other hand regretted that music critics continue anchored in a merely figurative approach that prevented him from appreciating the high degree of sophistication achieved by Dylan as a singer, his immeasurable talent as a composer and songwriter has seemed forever beyond any doubt.

The citation appears in the magnificent and highly acclaimed two-volume book, Paul Williams, Bob Dylan Performing Artist, from the very extensive and incomprehensible bibliography devoted to the enigmatic and elusive artist from Minnesota perhaps, one of the most unique and outstanding in the world. It is very difficult to talk about Dylan, first ,because it was hard to say something about him that someone had not already published before. His influence on popular music has been so extraordinary and so many of his albums in six different decades and two centuries deserve to be called absolute masterpieces, that paralysis occurs to anyone who tries to approach a study of his work that aspires not to be expendable. On the other hand, however, Dylan continues to be an impenetrable mystery who can only be approached in a multi-faceted and fragmented way, as he has always been presented himself, saying the richness of his multiple and elusive masks. That may not be least of the many virtues of I `m Not There, the Todd Haynes formidable film conducted four years ago.

Williams’s book is fascinating, because it brilliantly goes deep into a mystery through a precise prose that spread its enthusiasm to explore Dylan’s work not only through his official recordings but, above all, the registration of its endless activities, convinced after hear that almost all the best and largest of his work has taken place outside the confines of the recording studio in his live concerts, invested with an ephemeral quality that so very narrow links with the spiritual value always associated with the music and drama.

Famous, puzzling and astonishing is the magic of Dylan’s refusal to play the same song twice in the same way, which not only makes their incomparably exciting concert events but it raises key questions concerning the nature of the art, the artist and the public could experiment in live performances.

Paul Oilzum

For this European tour, Dylan will be accompanied by his powerful band and the prestigious Mark Knopfler, responsible for the distinctive guitar sound that adorned Infidels, one of the best Dylan albums in the eighties. Do not miss this concert if you rent apartments in Florence durings those dates.

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Translated by: Hans
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Pop icons usually dissolve quickly. Only some are still standing strong in the height of their career, still thrilling their crowd despite the years, creating sound dreams on the radio, that’s gone, that’s not there anymore, but which brings so much nostalgia. George Michael has known how to maintain himself, despite the years, as an interesting pop figure, with wide silences and distances, which has known how to make of his career an elegant pop trip, without falls or major stumbles. To think of it in another way, for example, when was the last time you heard something about George Michael, positive or negative? Well that’s the distance that places an artist in a unique position, where without recharged compromises he can have the freedom to carry on creating and being fabulous.

If, for example, you have the case of someone like Lady Gaga, it’s a different matter. Lady Gaga is, undoubtedly, talented but it seems that her reign is sustained by thousands of Twitter accounts, Facebook visits and Youtube. Of course, all of these are means in which social networks work efficiently, but little to they have to do with the original artist texture. Lady Gaga is of course the media product of today, a machinery of meanings and connotations that are incredibly post-modern. If Slavoj Zizek used to go out with her, allegedly, go figure. George Michael, however, maintains the charm and the magic that once held him as one of the 80s best singers, because it has to be said that with him, it’s not just a pretty face and elegance but also a particular style in his voice, that whispers, traps and wraps one sensually.

It has to be said that during the start of George Michael’s career, with the band Wham! together with Andrew Ridgeley, George created some of the best hits of the 80s, like ‘Wake me before you go-go’ or ‘Careless Whisper’, a romantic song with a sensual and sexual saxophone tone that, surely, warmed up thousands of love beds around the globe. Wham! only recorded three albums in its short time between 1983 and 1986, but it sold over 20 million copies of their work. George Michael, on the other hand, always captivated the world with that wonderful smile, tender eyes, toned muscles and sexy movements, both men and women. Today, the already mature but not least sexy George Michael is on tour with ‘Symphonica: The Orchestral Tour’, which has been taking him around different points in Europe and the UK. If you want to see George Michael like never before, this is your chance. What better experience than to listen to ‘Careless Whisper’ with a symphonic orchestra in the background. For more information on this tour, as well as tickets for the concert in Florence, visit George Michael’s official webpage: http://www.georgemichael.com/

Alexa Ray

Nothing better than getting apartments in Florence and enjoying this living pop icon in this beautiful city. You can’t miss it.

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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The direction of music changes with time and the years. In some way, today, music touches everyone in a direct or indirect way. All contemporary sensorial experience implies that sound is present, from art in all its shape to every day life, which also isn’t exempt from thousands of different sound experiences: melody, noise, rhythm; at hand to all ears. Sound also generates movement. Hundreds of frequencies all together in the universe generate more changes and transitions of matter, which with light generate life, death, blossoming and falls. Our daily experience is with sound as it is visual, probably over all other sense. The stimulations that reality generates in this way are processed as joint experiences of which we have to find a meaning and interpret towards where reality is leading us to. And despite being disperse, locked into our own little worlds, the human condition helps us share all of this.

Music also occupies a great part of our internet experience. Because of that, we’re not just willing to the presence of text and visual information with graphic design, art, video which generally shoots up our interaction on the net.  All of this accompanies daily life, it pronounces us and makes us pronounce ourselves. On the other hand, the same net has known how to take advantage of the new means of sound reproduction to be able to carry on commercializing with music and sound in general. Today, any genre is available on the internet, as are programmes to share files, which allow the global information exchange to be realtime, allowing us to share sounds from any part of the globe. The different platforms and social networks allow music to be in constant movement and effervescence.

There might not be a better place for pop music than the internet. That’s how many musical and audio commercial products can promote themselves at hair-raising speeds. Let’s say that more information doesn’t mean knowledge or experience. This way, people like Lady Gaga can manipulate a single and get thousands of users in a fraction of a second and convert a song into an instant hit. What guarantees the quality of this product, its attributes regarding a pop song, is not necessarily its value as a music piece but, now, the amount of views or re-tweets that it gets on the net. The more movement a product has, bigger its impact will be. What’s curious as well is that now we’re all active participants of these advertising processes, we risk at the time of posting, twittering or uploading information onto blogs. The trap of sound, like that, gets everywhere and in a thousand ways.

On the other hand, the real experience of the classic genre of Opera can only be lived in a concert or a live performance, and it’s truly indescribable. It distances itself from the previously states phenomenons and it is, undoubtedly, an interior exploration that can’t compare to other live shows. The Anual Opera Festival in Florence runs until the 13th of August and you can’t miss it. For more information visit this website: http://www.festivalopera.it/

Alexa Ray

To enjoy good music, nothing better than getting apartments in Florence and enjoying this beautiful city and its indescribable music.

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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In the small town of Lucca, near Florence, The Lucca Summer Festival 2011 takes place. This new version of the most anticipated music festival in Italy brings an extensive program of international music stars of all flavors and colors.

The Festival takes place in the beautiful walled city Its beginnings date back to 1998, when organized as a summer activity to attract cultural tourism of different ages to this  small town where they in the year 56 BC the encounter between Julius Caesar, Crassus and Pompey took place

One of the most anticipated concerts of the Summer Festival, is the prefromance of Joe Cocker along with legendary blues and jazz guitarist ,BB King, to be held on July 15th. This encounter between two great exponents of contemporary music, brings the virtuosity on guitar of BB with the voice of Cocker. Both are  Grammy winners B. B. King has won 14 times, while Cocker has won four times, and a Golden Globe

This year Lucca receive tourists from all over Europe who will attend the festival to listen to singers like Amy Winehouse, who will be in Piazza Napoleone on Saturday July 16th. The English singer and songwriter, known for music that mixes different stlyes like jazz, soul, ska, rock and R & B along with the her scandalous  private life has aroused high expectations among his followers, who anxiously await the concert.

On July 19th singer and actress Liza Minnelli will be performing. The actress known for her powerful musical style, won the Oscar for Best Actress for the film Cabaret (1972), based on the novel Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood. she also was this years host the TV Awards Award in New York

Closing the Festival the famous English acid-jazz and jazz-funk electronic music band Jamiroquai, led by singer Jay Kay will preform.  Since thier first album in 1992, they became a reference band for funk music. thier  name derives from the Native American tribe irolesa. SingerJay Kay says he has a close connection and mental relationship with this tribe. Selling over 35 million albums, not counting singles and DVD discs, Jamiroquai is one of the most important bands nowadays, being an excellent choice to close the festival.

More info:http://www.summer-festival.com/

Nancy Guzman

If you find apartments in Florence do not forget to taste delicious Garmugia soup accompanied by an glass of good wine before attending the Lucca Summer Festival and enjoy the best concert of the summer.

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Translated by: Marc
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Florence’s Danzainfiera is a four day event which celebrates the art of dance, with all the best from the world of dance organized into 500 events, seminars and performances. It’s an opportunity for dance schools, companies, and fitness centers from around the world to showcase what they have to offer.

The fair, which takes place over the 24^th-27^th February, will be 65,000 square metres of exhibition space for shows and events with leading figures of dance culture. Danzainfiera is an important platform for making dance more open, so that it can be celebrated in an accessible environment, away from the exclusive reputation that it has always had. The aim is to go back to the roots of dance, and the idea of expressing emotion through graceful and coordinated movement. Dance is a form of non-verbal communication with its own special language, whose codes encompass humanity as a whole, and it’s one of the few art forms where the action itself is the focal point, with the person just the support for this. It’s an art which is full of beauty, emotion and expression – just as much for the audience following the story unfold as for the dancers experiencing and performing it.

Dance is also one of the most symbolic forms of art because it stresses the need for human expression, and the communication of a message to an audience. Historically, dance has always represented the pursuit of freedom of both the mind and  the body. From slavery there emerged hundreds of different dances, all voicing resistance to barbaric oppression, rejection of the chains of imprisonment, and the pain of lost freedom. In this sense, dance has always drawn upon the movements of daily life, the rituals of social behaviour, the different elements of political and spiritual life, which all combine to create a singular and unique form of expression.

Dance is also deeply connected to human sexuality – the erotic, and the passion of love. Dance conquers the lover, seduces them, awakens their desire and brings a shared pleasure. The bible tells of the ability of the rebellious Lilith , first wife of Adam, of using and moving her body in order to seduce men, leaving them impotent or stealing their semen whilst they slept. Basically, she is the embodiment of the power that dance, and movement of the body to seduce. It is understandable then that the language of movement is a source of liberation and sensuality, allowing a person to unlock their erotic emotion.

This is why dance is a wonderful, freeing and healing art form – one that we should all be able to experience, for a happier mind and body free of all social barriers.



Nancy Guzman

DANZAINFIERA invites you into the world of dance, and to experience its wonderful and liberating art. After spending the day at the fair, rest your head at one of our apartments in Florence

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Translated by: Poppy
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Imagine you’ve saved for years for retirement. You wake up one day and discover that your accountant has left you penniless. You almost 70 years old and you divide your time between the Buddhist monastery where you practice meditation and your home, where you write and make music. What to do after making this kind of discovery. In the case of Leonard Cohen, you get back to work full steam ahead. In the last five years, since he discovered that his manager was stealing from him, he has recorded several new albums and is touring constantly. This year, the legend will tour Europe and Australia. On September 1, you will have the opportunity to see him live in Florence in the historic Piazza Santa Croce.

Over the years, his music has gained a reputation for being incredibly poetic, depressing and spiritually rich. His songs place themes of love, sex, art, depression and divine grace under the microscope. Before establishing herself as a musician and songwriter, he had already published two novels and several editions of poetry. But he decided to leave Canada, his native country, to migrate to the United States in 1967, because he thought that he might be more successful as a singer than a writer, and at that time, folk music was very fashionable. He frequented the Andy Warhol’s Factory and hung out with figures like Janis Joplin. During this period he released several albums and was acclaimed for being one of the best lyricists of his generation. However, he avoided the trap of getting stuck in the world of folk, and throughout his career he has released several albums inspired by various genres such as jazz, cabaret and experimental music.

Singers like Judy Collins, Jeff Buckley, Martha Wainwright and John Cale have sung versions of his songs which in some cases even surpassed the commercial success of the original songs. Rent apartments in Florence to live your spiritual adventures of love and self-knowledge. They might not be the Chelsea Hotel of the 70s, but they are comfortable, and safe to say that seeing this legend perform will be a magical experience.