In Prague, the First Celebratory Concert

Organised by the Italian Accordion Culture (IAC), in collaboration with ARS SPOLETIUM Music Publishing and Record Label and the Confédération Internationale des Accordéonistes (CIA), the festival reaches its 17th edition under the artistic direction of Mirco Patarini.

 

At 5 p.m. on Saturday, 7 November 2026, the Teatro Caio Melisso – Carla Fendi in Spoleto will host the opening concert of the Strumenti&Musica Festival, entitled Route 66: the third and final stop on the celebratory tour featuring Mirco Patarini, Stefan Hippe and Ladislav Horák. Accompanied by the Musici Lirienses orchestra, conducted by Maestro Alessandro Cedrone, the three accordionists will launch the seventeenth edition of the festival, whose main programme will run from 16 to 22 November, before concluding on 17 December.

 

After visiting the hometowns of Hippe and Horák, the Route 66 tour will arrive in Spoleto, where Patarini will take on the role of host—and more besides. The accordionist, who hails from Spoleto, has been the artistic director of the Strumenti&Musica Festival since its inaugural edition in 2008 and frequently takes part in the event as a performer as well.

 

Patarini’s first appearance at the festival dates back to May 2010, when he took to the stage of Spoleto’s Teatro Nuovo (which had not yet received UNESCO recognition at the time) on two occasions. First, he performed as an accordion soloist with the Collegium Tiberinum string orchestra, conducted by Maestro Marco Venturi, alongside violinist Andrea Cortesi and fellow Spoleto native Gabriele Francioli on clarinet. He then performed the concert I successi del M° Nicola Piovani in a duo with the pianist himself, winner of the Academy Award for Best Original Score in 1999 for the music composed for Roberto Benigni’s film Life Is Beautiful.

 

The artist’s next appearance at the Strumenti&Musica Festival took place in the 2012 edition, a particularly significant year for the event, as it coincided with Spoleto’s hosting of the 65th CIA Coupe Mondiale. Patarini—then artistic director of the Coupe and the IAC, as well as honorary vice-president of the CIA, of which he is now president—opened the event by welcoming participants with a concert at the Chiostro di San Nicolò, entitled Mirco Patarini in Concert.

 

The Maestro has also brought his music to other important venues across the city, including Palazzo Leti Sansi, where he performed in 2018, and the Teatro Caio Melisso. The latter is now home to an increasingly regular event: a concert for accordion and string orchestra which, with the festival’s seventeenth edition, will reach its third year. This year, too, Patarini will perform alongside the Musici Lirienses and, as usual, the programme will feature a special guest.

 

In 2024, the artistic director was joined on stage by Gabriele Mirabassi, an internationally renowned jazz clarinettist with whom he had also shared the stage in other occasions, such as at the Bayan and Bayanists Festival at the Gnessin Russian Academy of Music in 2021. In 2025, accordionist Momir Novakovic, performing on his Scandalli Extreme X, and Estonian violinist Mari Poll joined Patarini on the stage of the historic seventeenth-century theatre in Spoleto.

 

This year, the spotlight will instead fall on the musicians involved in the Route 66 project. The musical bond between Patarini and Spoleto has also extended beyond the festival he directs. In July 2014, the accordionist performed at Casa Menotti, the former home of the founder of Spoleto’s long-established Festival dei Due Mondi, as part of an event associated with the festival.

 

Spoleto is the city where Mirco Patarini’s passion for the accordion first took root, beginning with those early notes played at the Italian Music Education Centre. And it is here, year after year, that he renews his connection with the city through his artistic direction of the Strumenti&Musica Festival and his performances.