Wedding at Villa Chiaramonte Bordonaro (Palermo)

Villa Chiaramonte Bordonaro, a neoclassical gem in Palermo, is already a stage of elegance in its own right. Tiziana and Gabriele’s wedding (a pianist and an organist), however, raised the bar: for us it was a privilege and an immense pleasure to play for an audience of professional musicians. And so much applause! It truly felt like a concert.

Let’s shoot a reel!

This Liberty-style (Italian Art Nouveau) villa, with spaces designed by Ernesto Basile, is one of the most sought-after venues for Palermo couples planning their wedding, as well as a favorite for international destination weddings. We’ve lost count of how many times we’ve played here; by now we know every corner of it! And so many couples, so many stories…

So we said to ourselves: what better place to tell a bit of our story? Why not show our followers our typical quartet line-up in an equally typical and iconic spot, the musicians’ corner in Basile’s veranda?

The room is intimate and cozy, with low ceilings and few tables, and to create the right interaction with the room (in acoustics and in atmosphere) you need a light touch on the keys: brushes on the snare, a soft bass and a velvet voice. In short, our specialty: being discreet and elegant when the audience and the venue call for it.

In a few minutes we completed our social media mission, another little star on our Instagram profile. And if you’re curious to see it, click here :)

What a night!

What a crowd tonight! Many of the guests are professional musicians, Gabriele’s colleagues: pianists, violinists, orchestra players… lots of classically trained musicians. I know what you’re thinking: for you at Sarabanda, isn’t a situation like this a bit like taking an exam? No! Not at all! It may seem strange, but we don’t feel inhibited at all, and we don’t get that unpleasant feeling of being closely scrutinized by a panel of experts. The atmosphere is set from the very first song, when we play L-O-V-E for the couple’s entrance into the room: nothing but close attention, shared joy and the enthusiastic involvement of guests who, with professional expertise, fully appreciate the musical and interpretive quality of the band they are listening to. And we, forgive us a touch of presumption, never had any doubt :)

By the way, this isn’t the first time a musician getting married has chosen us. Among many others, I’m reminded of the wedding of a bride (a professional harpist) who performed a duet with Salvo in a romantic, dreamy version of Cocciu d’amuri. But that’s another story, which we’ll tell you another time.

Gabriele and Tiziana’s story began, in their own words, in “humility and sweetness”: friends first, then something more, but with many difficulties because of the distance… Then Tiziana, a teacher, manages to get a transfer to our Sicily, and that’s when their story really begins. A ring, a promise and a date set: or rather, more than a precise date, a day, because all that mattered to them was that it be a 17. You know when a number keeps popping up everywhere in your life, in the most unexpected ways? The 17th, the day of the declaration of love; the 17 euros in change; table 17 at the restaurant; the 17 on license plates? Well, exactly: when someone up there sends you one of those cryptic signs that you know you can’t decipher, but that you rely on, with hope, for every important thing in your life.

That’s how it went, and that’s why we’re here too on this 17th of October, accompanying their first dance to “Il cielo in una stanza” and doing everything we can to make their party special with a setlist of 17 songs.

Want to hear one that the couple particularly cared about? You can! Because, luckily, our fantastic and multitalented drummer filmed this reel of the song that big romantic Gabriele wanted to dedicate to Tiziana: Il mondo è mio