Assunta & The Light Orchestra

Assunta & The Light Orchestra 

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The singer-songwriter Assunta Mandaglio has Southern Italian roots and was born in Belgium. Since 2000 she has been writing her own music, winning a couple of Belgian music competitions (“Latent Talent” and “Debuutrock 2000”).She founded her first full band in 2000 under the name of ASSUNTA MANO. For this band, Assunta wrote two albums. Her debut album "A get well balloon" (2004) was received very favorably by the Belgian press and got a lot of airplay on Belgian national radio. In 2008 she wrote the album “Say it” in cooperation with the British producer Matt Foster (producer, engineer, programmer at Miloco Studio's, London).Assunta does not limit herself to one genre but dives into all music that moves her.  Hence, in 2010, she started cooperating with Dirk Zwartenbroekx, front man and driving force of BUSCEMI.  For two years she toured around Belgium with BUSCEMI as a member of the "Squadra Bossa".  She wrote the lyrics and melody for the track "Nite People” on Buscemi’s record of the same name, which was released in 2012 on the label Prova records and distributed by EMI.Since then she has also contributed as songwriter to three records of the band "Balaxy Orchestra", an eleven-men strong band that shared an interesting ten years. With these bands Assunta played at small and big festivals, both at home and abroad. Guitarist/producer Pieter ThysHas been playing and living music for almost 20 years, mainly as a guitar player, composer and producer.He started his career with the famous, progressive folk band Troissoeur with which, over the course of nearly ten years, he made 3 albums  ((EMI) "Trah Njim", "Levina" en "Troissoeur") and played at several festivals both at home and abroad (Taiwan, China, the Netherlands, Czech Republic,…), including Crossing Borders, Dranouter, AB, EBU broadcast union….While with this band Pieter collaborated with recognized artists like Daniel B (front 242), Sandy Dillon, Staoshi takeishi (John Zorn, Dhafer Youssefh)…During this period he also developed several self-designed, experimental guitars (Double-neck frettles guitar, Violin guitar…) that he still uses together with a self-designed system to create live-looping and sound design live on stage.Pieter created various musical theatre productions for “Theater Transparant” en “Theater Froefroe” with which he toured all the way from Norway to Portugal.As an engineer/producer he cooperated on several albums in the World music/Jazz scene, including Hijaz, Troissoeur, Tribe.His latest passion however, was his own Rock & roll big band Millenniums, later on named Balaxyorchestra. Together with Assunta Mandaglio he wrote 3 albums for this band: "Hi-fi" stereo, "2nd Cumming" and, the latest, " Wilkey may trip" which was ranked in the European World music charts for a couple of months.This “Bigband” formation was warmly welcomed at several festivals (Sfinx festival, Dranouter, AB, Les Nuits Botaniques) as well as on national radio.The collaboration with Assunta Mandaglio provided an inexhaustible, creative basis for a new and challenging cooperation under the name of Assunta & The Light Orchestra This duo project became their new, big artistic challenge and further intensified their collaboration in songwriting, arranging, playing and touring.This natural evolution brought them closer to themselves in terms of performance, sound, songs and lyrics.In this way, Assunta’s beautiful songs, pure voice, biographical lyrics and Pieter’s original guitar playing and sound come into their own even more.  It constitutes the perfect combination for a merger of their musical worlds, and allows them to convince their live audience time and again.2013 was a fantastic year. Not only did the duo play about 40 concerts in Belgium and Germany, but also and most importantly they spend a large amount of time in the studio recording their first album

"Occupied by the Sun".This album contains powerful, moving songs about the little and big things in life. Both musicians are inspired by their past,

 

present and future, and infuse their music as well as lyrics with themes like hope, fear, desire, life, being on the road, search for the essence of

 

things, inner happiness.The record "Occupied by the sun" moves and winks at the beauty of melancholy.