Overture Deserto was composed for “Festival au Desert Presenza dAfrica” in 2012 and describes the sounds of the desert and its people, discovering different styles which he took as inspiration.

The piece is divided into three distinct parts: the introduction describes the sounds of the desert, sand and the wind (double bass 1), the sounds of the camels (double bass 4) and the sounds of early stringed instruments. The second part is a meeting of drums. Women are responsible for playing the drums while they sing and the magic of drums with voices is quite hypnotic. The composer wrote an improvised
drum solo with rhythmic patterns which emulate the characteristic sound of the “tongue singers”. The third part is a modern composition of the desert, called the “Blues of the Desert” and is a repetitive composition that sounds like an archaic blues.

Overtura Deserto was premiered in Florence at the “Festival au Desert, Presenza dAfrica” in July 2012 by Alberto Bocini, Anita Mazzantini, Marco Marteli and Simon Garcia.