“IMAGINE THERE ARE NO COUNTRIES”

A Musical Journey Across Continents

by her audiences to interact or behave a certain way, she responds that “Things are changing regarding audience’s behavior and participation.” Quoting Verdi in his native Italian, she adds:

Melbourne-based Argentinian pianist Andrea Katz is steeped in a storytelling tradition. Director of Songmakers Australia, she is as familiar with the Australasian music scene as the international stage, connecting with audiences through recorded and live music through regular travel abroad.

Torniamo all’antiqua e facciamo progresso. We are going back, hopefully, to the time when audiences were allowed to express their excitement and could interact with the performers. Of course, it depends on what repertoire you are presenting but that can be made very clear by your behavior on stage.

Katz’s personal and professional journey across continents began when she left Argentina to begin a new chapter, first in Paris and then in Israel. She moved to Australia in 1994, lived and worked in Sydney for 15 years, before moving to Melbourne after being invited by her colleague and “fellow songmaker Merlyn Quaife to join her on the staff of the Melbourne Conservatorium.” Italian on her mother’s side, Katz speaks Spanish and Italian fluently and is no stranger to the tarantella . When asked if she expects

Katz also has Jewish heritage and lived in Israel for 11 years, completed her second degree in Jerusalem, and started her opera coach career with the New Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv. She feels a strong affinity with Israel as a country and community: “My father’s family is Jewish, from Ukraine, so Israel was also home to me. I particularly enjoyed the Levantine idiosyncrasies and the amazing history, right at your feet.” Her curiosity in music, traditions, and the world around her has led to great cultural insights and a perfection of musical skills. She shares her specialized understanding of, for example, Argentinian tango music traditions with her cohorts of students at the University of Melbourne – her main academic affiliation. She also teaches master classes at the School of Music at the National University of San Juan, Argentina.

Alongside fellow Argentinians Martha Argerich and Daniel Barenboim, who

“stem from the same piano school of Maestro Vincenzo Scaramuzza,” Katz has left a veritable musical legacy. A dynamic and vibrant pianist, she has performed at a multitude of venues nationally and abroad. She gave an impressive rendition of Astor Piazzolla in a concert titled Nostalgia: Piazzolla 101, at Tempo Rubato in Brunswick, Melbourne, in April 2022. Her vibrant and dynamic and searingly melancholic piano music filled the room. Small in stature but with a commanding presence, she collaborates regularly with her students on vocals – as was the case this particular night, when bass-baritone Nicholas Dinopoulos added his narrative voice to the repertoire, and sounds from regional Argentina matched with lyrics of love, nostalgia, longing, and belonging that ultimately hold universal value. When asked about the timeless relevance of tango, Katz – herself an aficionado of Astor Piazzolla and Carlos Gardel – stresses:

People all over the world are fascinated by tango, be it traditional or modern. Piazzolla broke the mold of raw, smouldering passions by incorporating his love of Bach into the rhythmical patterns. He was very unpopular in Argentina until he had great success in Europe.

She believes in the ultimate global relevance of classical music and that it elevates us to new heights. Attracted to a variety of different composers and styles, she quotes John Lennon’s famous songline: “Imagine there are no countries.”

When the pandemic hit in 2019, the city of Melbourne was subjected to an extended period of lockdown and international borders closed, Katz kept active in her multifaceted university role. She explains that the entire Faculty of Arts was moved online in only 4 days. Even if she experienced a loss of performances, Katz and colleagues were able to “collaborate with trailblazing organizations like the Australian Digital Concert Hall and other organizations and festivals in Australia and abroad. It also allowed me to develop new teaching techniques that made it possible for my young students to complete their assignments and examinations online.” Katz occasionally has to play unknown repertoire for her students but the repertoire she chooses for her ensembles is “always very close to my heart.” She concludes our interview by emphasizing that “Argentina will always be my country, but I am very happy in Melbourne.”

Lorenzo Zuffi thinks of another great classic of literature, The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri.

Of course, I will say Dante! When writing his Commedia, Dante was struggling, and we know this from the beginning: “Midway upon the journey of our life / I found myself within a forest dark, / For the straightforward pathway had been lost.” It might sound like a cliché, but these lines point to the spiritual journey Dante undertakes to heal his inner conflicts: by immersing himself in the darkness of his sorrows, he is able to find God – a Chirstian God, of course. But God in Dante is spiritual more than religious. What provides me with inexhaustible material for my work is Dante’s approach to the theme of life represented as an arc, from when he descends into Hell until the moment he exits Paradise, that temporal arc of only a few days in the Commedia summarizes all the battles we have to fight to stay alive and, eventually, to find peace.

Michelangelo is one of the greatest geniuses of the Italian Renaissance. Throughout his life, he was tormented by the clashing encounter of the hardness of stone, a metaphor for suffering and passion that he himself embodied, and the spirit within matter, called concept

The function of the artist for Michelangelo was thus to adapt "matter" and "concept," and the effort to translate a "concept" into work attracted the sculptor more than the practical refinement he often left to his students.

Michelangelo's art can be summed up in the useful strokes of the chisel to nullify his own ego, so much so that he himself became the secret soul of stone and thus of eternity

Lorenzo Zuffi

Giuliana Poli

Journalist, cultural anthropology researcher, writer, analyst, and expert on iconography and iconology of works of art

Tena Prelec, an Italian academic hailing from the Balkans, recommends an author who dispels the myths around the region’s recent conflicts.

The 1990s wars in the Balkans were not only destructive for the havoc they wrought during that decade but also for their enduring legacy of divisions. These wars were often misunderstood and relegated to the status of “ethnic conflicts.” Superficial narratives of foreign writers catapulted into this region do little to dispel the myths and help a better understanding of the intricate situation and its aftermath. Talented writers like Azra Nuhefendić have helped bring the nuances of the wars in the Balkans to Italian readers. Their searing memories, sometimes appropriated by more established writers, are a precious window through which to grasp the facts and the emotions as they were experienced on the ground. Often unsung, such voices deserve to be heard loud and clear.

The former mayor of Riace, Domenico “Mimmo” Lucano, is a symbol of the fight for freedom and human rights of all people who leave their homes in search of a better future.

During his mandate as mayor of the small town in the province of Reggio Calabria, between 2004 and 2018, he allowed migrants and refugees to settle in the many abandoned properties and to set up businesses, revitalizing the local economy and preventing the closure of the local school.

Praised abroad – he was nominated one of the most influential political leaders by Fortune magazine and awarded the International Peace Prize by the German city of Dresden in 2017.