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Opus Avantra comprises three parts: Opus (opera - work) Avan (avanguardia - vanguard) and Tra (tradition - tradition). The name sums up the movement's ideology which aims to represent a movement of avant-garde music with its roots embedded firmly in the study and recovery of tradition. The idea is that innovation, which we believe to be fundamental as the language of the present day, cannot be matched to tradition but rather to its revisitation and re-reading in a contemporary key. But Opus Avantra also means being open to different musical modes: ethnic, rock, jazz, canzone, classical and operatic, electronic and contemporary music. The guiding thread must always be moderation in taste, a careful calibration of this mix with the idea of creating a new language without frontiers of musical genres - a language which can fuse our past and our future; one which can easily be enjoyed by all, but which is in its own way cultured and innovative. I do not know if we have always succeeded in our attempts, that is for our listeners to judge, but the fact remains that Opus Avantra has been a precursor of all the borderline or fusion movements.
From its beginnings in 1973 with the record "Opus Avantra Donella Del Monaco", the founders of the movement are Donella Del Monaco, Giorgio Bisotto (not as musician but as the group's philosopher) Alfredo Tisocco (composer) and Renato Marengo (producer). There have been various subsequent collaborations with other musicians, but these have always been true to the spirit of the original idea, one in which we still believe today.
The group's manifesto is as follows:
Our musical ensemble was created to fulfil a need arising out of the impasse in which the musical world finds itself today.
We can indeed observe that the world of music is, today, divided into various sectors with no communication between them, tightly linked to socio-cultural layering.
This pluralism tends to reproduce itself, causing ever more mystifying situations in that they avoid solving the individual's frustrating current state of atomisation.
Without going into the historical origins of the contemporary situation, we observe the existence of two big sectors: 'commercial' music, which can vary from canzonettas to worse phenomena known as rock-pop, and various pseudo-avant-garde creations, to music for followers, ranging from a disheartened absolutist attachment to the various genres of the past, to an attitude of experimentation at all costs, often ending up in expediency.
We do not deny the value of certain examples of contemporary music (which we, indeed, assimilate), nor do we discount the efforts made by some pop groups (while at the same time we are free of hang-ups regarding the experiences of the past). Our intention is to recover that fundamental and essential past which was a bridge between art and people.
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