Dance Away Columbus Day

CLAUDIO COCCOLUTO returns to New York

DJazz Set with FABRIZIO subassemblies

October 11, 2014

Highline Ballroom

In celebration of Columbus Day this year Italian Americans and lovers of Italy in New York will gather to dance to the sound of house music. Forget the mandolin and get ready to show off your best disco look.

 The event is at the Highline Ballroom (431 W 16th St, New York), October 11th, from 1:30 pm until evening, for an entire day of Italian beats by Claudio Coccoluto, a DJ with thirty years of experience who became an icon of house music in Europe. Adding to the evening’s excitement, there will be an exceptional guest star: Fabrizio Sotti, a composer and multi-instrumentalist who has collaborated with many big names in music.

 For the first time the national holiday celebrating Columbus and the Italian contribution to American society and culture has become appealing to a millennial audience. The thread that unites Italy and America in politics, culture, and art, is now moving to the sound of music. Claudio Coccoluto, the DJ providing the beats, has brought his unique style to the Italian dance floors since the 90s, and has also received international appreciation during his thirty year career. Lending a helping hand to his friend Claudio, Fabrizio Sotti will also perform – who, just a few months ago animated the same Highline Ballroom with another concert dubbed Fabrizio Sotti & Friends, in which he was accompanied by internationally renowned artists such as Melanie Fiona, Algebra Blessett, M1 (Dead Prez), Claudia Acuna, Res, Ice T, Pizzo Alberto and DJ Walter Buonanno. On October 11 Sotti will perform with Coccoluto in a new version of the DJazz set, a fusion of a jazz and classic DJ set, a popular formula in Ibiza in the early 70s. As legend has it, the resident DJ of Studio 54, Nicky Siano and the great jazz musician Miles Davis met on the Spanish island –resulting in what we today call Djazz.

 This modernized Djazz set marks the first encounter between two Italian artists, one (Coccoluto) arriving from Italy, and the other (Sotti) a New Yorker by adoption, coming together for the benefit of Italians in America. All this is happening in New York, a city’s whose Italian influence far exceeds any other in this part of the world.

 The event’s creation was intended to rejuvenate Columbus Day, to make it appealing to a new generation through music, and to reawaken interest in the most Italian day on the American calendar. It is with these ideals in mind that I Love Italian Djs Records, the organizer of the event, is building new foundations through which we celebrate the exchange between two symbiotic cultures and ways of life.

 The event is organized by I Love Italian Djs Records in collaboration with Day & Night and in partnership with Zonin and La VOCE di New York.