FLORIAN

Florian is the name of an ancient, famous and typical Café of Piazza San Marco in Venice (Le Orme's hometown) where you can usually hear artists perform classical music. This album has been named with the same name of this café and it represents an effort to blend classical music influences (more precisely classical chamber music influences, not symphonic) with progressive rock. The album is played completely with classical instruments and it sounds like a kind of "ante-litteram unplugged". Anyway, I don't think you could define it as folkish, medieval or gothic but just classically-inspired and the reference points could be some works of Vivaldi or Giuliani with progressive contaminations (this is more evident in the two instrumentals, "Florian" and "El gran senser"). The lyrics are inspired by "classical" works too: "Jaffa" has biblical references; "Pietro il pescatore" is inspired by the character of St. Peter, while "Il mago" and "Calipso" contain references to the Odyssey and "Fine di un viaggio" is about the end of a musical journey (Lascia il tuo tamburo e vai in cerca di altri suoni / Le tue ombre inutili nessuno segue più - Give up your drums and go looking for new sounds / Nobody follows your useless shadows anymore). Florian is a very underrated album and I think it deserves more attention by any progressive music lover.