Angelo Branduardi

In those albums, Branduardi exploited themes and patterns from early music, mostly Renaissance and early Baroque. The song "Alla fiera dell'Est" ("At the Eastern Fair") is still popular among Italians of every age, who test themselves committing to memory all the fable-like, repetitive lyrics. It is based on an old Jewish song in Aramaic ("Chad Gadya" - One Kid Goat) sung at the end of the Passover Seder night service. In 2007 "Alla fiera dell'Est" was covered by Israeli singer Shlomi Shabat for a Passover time commercial for cellphone company Pelephone.

In 2003, a new album, Altro ed altrove ("Other and Elsewhere"), in a time period marked by a rise of racism and intolerance, brought together (mainly) love stories from several cultures.

In 1998, Branduardi teamed up with Italian stand-up comedian and writer Giorgio Faletti for Il dito e la luna ("The Finger and the Moon").

In 1996, during the celebrations for the restoration of the Duomo of Spilimbergo after the catastrophic 1976 earthquake, he recorded the album Futuro antico ("Ancient Future"), in which he, as an early Baroque musician, keeps reusing, mixing, wording pre-existing material along with his own. This experience, accomplished with the aid of musicians and musicologists, continued with Futuro antico II and Futuro antico III. The same year he performed "Te vojo 'bbene assaje" ("I love you so much" in Neapolitan) with Italian pop singer Eugenio Finardi.

The album Si può fare ("It Can Be Done", 1993) brought back Branduardi to normality, but the artist is now struggling to evade the minstrel character which was now too tight for him. In 1994, he published Domenica e lunedì ("Sunday and Monday"), dedicated to the Italian poet Franco Fortini who was one of Branduardi's professors in his school years.

Subsequent albums showed an increasing desire towards experimentation and differentiation. Branduardi (1981) had a more intimate tone, Cercando l'oro ("Searching for Gold", 1983) had very sophisticated and delicate arrangements (starts with a String Quartet), Branduardi canta Yeats ("Branduardi sings Yeats", 1985) was a tribute to William Butler Yeats. Pane e rose ("Bread and Roses", 1988) was a still inspired, but increasingly dark picture of life and death. Il Ladro ("The Thief", 1991) marked a very delicate point of Branduardi's life, edging on depression, echoed in a dark, almost cemeterial, style of singing.

La Luna ("The Moon"), including "Hooligan's Confession" (translation of a poem by Esenin) and the fine, delicate song giving the LP its name, was a prelude to the success of the following works. Alla fiera dell'Est (English edition: Highdown Fair, 1976) was Branduardi's first vastly popular album, followed by La Pulce d'Acqua (English version, Fables and Fantasies 1978) and Cogli la prima mela (English edition, Life is the Only Teacher, 1979). Lyrics for the English versions of Branduardi's albums were written by Peter Sinfield, also lyricist for King Crimson and Emerson, Lake & Palmer.

Angelo Branduardi (born 12 February 1950) is an Italian folk/folk rock singer-songwriter and composer who scored relative success in Italy and European countries such as France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands and Greece.