Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino To Return To NYC For 50th Anniversary Tour

Southern Italy's legendary maranta roots band Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino will return to NYC to celebrate their 50th Anniversary with a special show at East Village music venue Drom. The show is part of a whirlwind U.S. tour in March and April, with stops in Chicago, and the prestigious Big Ears and Savannah Music Festivals. Founded in 1975 by the Durante family and now led by their visionary inheritor Mauro, CGS return to the US with an explosive show led by the pulsating healing rhythms of the Taranta. Come celebrate one of the most thrilling live bands in the world!

Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino 2025 U.S. Tour Dates

03/27 Old Town School Of Folk Music - Chicago, IL

03/28 Savannah Music Festival - Savannah, GA

03/30 Big Ears Festival - Knoxville, TN

04/02 Drom - New York City, NY

About Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino

Formed by writer Rina Durante in 1975, Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino (CGS) is regarded as Italy's leading and longest-standing traditional music ensemble, hailing from the Salento -- the heel of the Italian boot -- in Puglia. Italy's fascinating dichotomy of tradition and modernity come together in the music of CGS: the seven piece band and dancer are the leading exponents in a new wave of young performers re-inventing Southern Italy's Pizzica musical and dance traditions for today's global audience.

The tens of thousands who often congregate for this Lecce-based band's concerts in Italy know: Bandleader, fiddler, and drummer Mauro Durante and company can make an audience shimmy with the energy of the ancient ritual of pizzica tarantata, said to cure the taranta spider's bite with its frenzied trance dances. CGS shows are a life explosion: full of energy, passion, rhythm and mystery, they bring the audience from the past into modernity, and back.

Leadership of the ensemble was handed down to Durante by his acclaimed father Daniele, in 2007. CGS has revitalized both the rousing and the introspective sides of Southern Italian song and dance. Durante continues to innovate and energize, bringing decades of experience playing with global artists (Ballake Sissoko, Ibrahim Maalouf, Piers Faccini, Justin Adams, Red Baraat), contemporary classical composers (Ludovico Einaudi), and pop mavericks (Stewart Copeland of The Police). Internationally acclaimed by critics and audiences, with 20 albums and countless shows all over the world, CGS was awarded Best Group in the world at the Songlines Music Awards 2018.

CGS is: Mauro Durante (voice, frame drums, violin), Alessia Tondo (voice, percussions), Giulio Bianco (Italian bagpipes, harmonica, recorders), Massimiliano Morabito (diatonic accordion), Emanuele Licci (voice, guitar, bouzouki), Giancarlo Paglialunga (voice, tamburrieddhu), Silvia Perrone (dance) .