FOUNDATION 'INSTITUTE OF CONCENTRATIONARY MUSICAL LITERATURE'
“The music created in captivity, from the first Lager to the last Gulag, annihilates totalitarian ideologies, strengthens the ideals and introduces us to better days. The musician does not set the Lager to music nor does he elevate deportation to a poetic element; he rather ideologically destroys the Camp through music. In fact, the deported musician aspired to make the walls of the Camp collapse by singing, playing and writing music "
Francesco Lotoro
The 'Institute of Concentrationary Musical Literature' Foundation is a non-profit organization based in Barletta (Italy) established by notarial deed in 2014 on the initiative of a small group of promoting partners - Francesco Lotoro, Grazia Tiritiello, Daniele Barchetta, Paolo Candido - at purpose of protecting and enhancing the extraordinary heritage of music written in concentration camps and other places of military and civil captivity around the world between 1933 and 1953 and collected by the Apulian pianist and composer Francesco Lotoro, in over 30 years of research, so that it could be returned to mankind. An immeasurable artistic and human heritage that will be the heart of the Citadel of Concentrationary Music, the largest hub in the world dedicated to the music written in the Camps; a place where the "dream" of Francesco Lotoro, President of the Foundation, becomes an artistic, cultural and spiritual treasure of the world, everyone's memory.
The ICML Foundation - establishing authoritative scientific and artistic collaborations - undertook to care of this heritage by providing for the preservation, transcription, digitization, performance and recording of the thousands of musical scores that - like pages unfairly torn from the book of collective history - remained unknown for over 70 years. Thanks to Francesco Lotoro and the ILMC Foundation, this music crossed the border of barbed wire of the Camps, revealing a multiform universe of feelings and emotions, as well as great talents and masterpieces, finally available to the present and future generations.
The 'Institute of Concentrationary Music Literature' Foundation is recorded in the Register of Legal Persons at the Prefecture - Territorial Office of the Government of Barletta-Andria-Trani.