Cellist will take audience on musical journey of Venice

"I tell stories with my cello," says Claudio Ronco, solo cellist with the Clemencic Consort of Vienna and Baroque music composer and musicologist.

The story Ronco will be telling at Millennium Place is titled Bridges.

"The meaning of Bridges is in the performance," he says. "I tell a number of stories through a metaphoric goal. The bridges of Venice are a well known symbol between the old and new culture. Art needs to be a bridge between the physical, and the metaphorical."

Bridges is six pieces for cello and voice. The show’s entryway is Venice’s Jewish quarter at the height of its power during the 1630s. Art, design and commerce flourished in the community’s five synagogues, located in and around the Venice waterways during the Renaissance.

Bridges finishes up in 2001 with short originals Ronco composed in August of this year.

Ronco also plays selections from J.S. Bach, 17 ^th century composer Paul Gabrielli and David Popper, the Jewish Romantic composer.

Born in Torino and living in Venice for the past 20 years, Ronco’s passion is to perform modern tunes on ancient instruments. For this concert he will play a 1673 Italian cello belonging to Antonio Cassini.

His array of vintage instruments include cellos from G.B. Guadagnin, made in Cremona in 1740, and Jean Ouvrard, circa 1745.

Ronco studied at the Conservatory Giuseppe Verdi under Renzo Brancaleon and Pietro Nava, and later at Anna Bijlsma in Amsterdam. His work is published with Harmonia Mundi, Accord Musifrance and the Italian label Nuova Era. Ronco regularly plays festivals like Musica Antiqua de Sevilla and Alte Musikfestival Berlin.

David Berner, the show’s producer, introduces Ronco’s travelogue and says the show will "take us on a journey visually and musically to these Italian places."

Bridges is part a concert series celebrating the music of Venice.

For information and tickets for Bridges call Maurice Young Millennium Place at 604-935-8410.