Fil Bo Riva & Benjamin Amaru

In the organizer's words:

Filippo Bonamici aka Fil Bo Riva is one of the most talented singers and songwriters around. Born in Rome to an Italian father and a German mother, he started making music at the age of ten. Fil Bo Riva is a musical cosmopolitan who has lived in Italy, Germany, Ireland and Spain. He has transferred something from all these countries, languages and cultural influences into his music and sounds international in the best sense of the word.

In the early stages of his career, Fil Bo Riva played sold-out tours and concerts in Paris, London, Milan and Amsterdam, among others, and was a guest at festivals such as Great Escape, Eurosonic and Montreux Jazz Festival. After a first EP, the debut album "Beautiful Sadness" was released in 2019, and Fil Bo Riva has also toured with Milky Change, Matt Corby and Joan As Police Woman, among others.

Fil Bo Riva achieves something in his music that he has brought to perfection on his new album "Modern Melancholia", which will be released on September 20, 2024: the extremely rare feat of making intimate music with a broad appeal. These songs work just as well in arenas as they do in rainy provincial train stations. It is expansive, powerful pop music that reflects the sound of past decades as well as that of modern times.

The new album, "Modern Melancholia", owes its power to bring people together across emotional and factual boundaries not least to Bonamici's voice: The singer Fil Bo Riva is in very direct contact with his inner life. His voice is drenched in emotion and at the same time gripping, melancholic and powerful, penetrating and sincere down to the deepest corners. There are very, very few singers with such an overwhelming, stirring voice.

These songs deal with the big and fundamental questions of life, wistfully lamenting transience while embracing the future in the knowledge that ultimately there are no certainties.

"Modern Melancholia" is the music of someone who has been through the darkness and returned to the light. We will not hear a truer pop album this year.