«MI AMI is the festival of first times» an interview with Carlo Pastore

Milan is a city that offers few certainties: the fact that the last weekend of May Circolo Magnolia brings to life MI AMI is certainly one of them. The seventeenth edition (in nineteen years) of the MI AMI Festival - Important Music in Milan is just around the corner, ready to ring in the first real summer of concerts after the pandemic. On May 26, 27, and 28, the event organized by Better Days Sale will bring together six stages (Dr. Martens Stage, Sephora Stage, Idealist Stage, MI FAI, and Twinkly Stage) some of the most interesting names on the Italian music scene, from Rondodasosa to Verdena, from Levante to Cosmo, and will also feature a new space among the trees where you can dance in a magical forest: the Engine Arena. For the occasion, we interviewed Carlo Pastore, artistic director of MI AMI since 2005, TV and radio host, and much more. «The pandemic had devastating effects, it prevented a generation from experiencing concerts and festivals the right way. Today we are trying to explain to everyone what we are. We started the campaign with the phrase "This is a festival" to emphasize that MI AMI is a space-time space where 100 artists give full shows and concerts on 6 stages. We are not a fair, not a concert, not a festival. As soon as you walk through the portal, you enter a different experience» Pastore commented when we asked him about his expectations for the first real MI AMI after the Covid.

As is tradition, the line-up is unashamedly heterogeneous because, as Pastore tells us, "we are looking for elective affinities". Headliners include Verdena, who return with their new album 12 years after their first (and only) appearance at the festival, the love and resistance of Coma_Cose, the highly anticipated celebratory live show from Dargen D'Amico, the only summer dates from Fulminacci, Cosmo, and Mecna, and the exclusive live presentation of new albums from Lovegang126, Giuse The Lizia and BNKR44, Naska, and Colombre. Plus the solo debut of Federico Dragogna, the founder of Ministri for the first time, Adriano Viterbini's Bud Spencer Blues Explosion, singer-songwriter Dente, Levante's Opera Futura, singer-songwriter Emma Nolde and rapper Nayt, the return of L'Officina della Camomilla and, five years after his last live performance, Vasco Brondi with "Canzoni da Spiaggia Deturpata". «Our composition allows us to have stages with Verdena and Lovegang126 together, or moments when the garage band Bee Bee Sea shares the stage with the groovy Bruno Belissimo. It will be beautiful, varied, magical, and unexpected. Also, I tell you, full of surprises!».

The surprises include Rondodasosa, the rapper from San Siro who is known more abroad than in Italy, and the concert with the live band Villabanks, who brings his 'Sex Festival' to the stage, in stark contrast to the indie rock of Lil Kvneki with the American Boyfriends, the new crazy techno house incarnation of PopX and the emerging beauty of Yasmina and Mont Baud, precisely in the name of that heterogeneity we spoke of earlier. Because «MI AMI is the festival of first times. We want to be forever the place, the space-time of energies and youth.»

Tickets can be purchased at miamifestival.it.