Following stops in Los Angeles and New York’s Carnegie Hall, MUSIC4D arrives at the United Nations Palace in Geneva for Italy’s 2026-28 Human Rights Council mandate, with “From Morricone to Bacalov” a show that blends music, cinema, and advanced technologies. The PNRR project places Southern Italy at the heart of international cultural dialogue.
PALERMO, 27.01.2026 – Following its international tours in Los Angeles and at New York’s Carnegie Hall, the MUSIC4D project arrives at one of the world’s iconic venues for diplomacy, thanks to a collaboration with the Permanent Mission of Italy to the UN and International Organizations in Geneva.
On Thursday, February 5th, at 6:00 PM, the United Nations Palace in Geneva will host “From Morricone to Bacalov: The Music of Southern Italian Cinema,” a show that transforms film music into a powerful tool for cultural dialogue, speaking to global audiences and institutions.
In the Assembly Hall, this will not be merely a concert performance but an immersive experience that reinterprets the great film scores inspired by Southern Italy through a contemporary performance language, where music, technology, and research merge into a single narrative. The compositions of Ennio Morricone, Nino Rota, and Luis Bacalov become living, reimagined material, capable of resonating in an international context like that of the United Nations.
At the heart of the show is our collective emotional memory: melodies that have portrayed the South not as a periphery, but as a fertile ground for universal narratives. From The Leopard to Cinema Paradiso, from Il Postino to Baarìa, this music has given voice to local stories, transforming them into a shared heritage that is more relevant today than ever.
«Bringing this repertoire to the Palace of Nations, on the occasion of Italy’s new mandate at the Human Rights Council for 2026-28, is to recognize that music has a role that extends beyond the artistic dimension», emphasizes Michelangelo Galeati, conductor and advisor for MUSIC4D. «Here, music becomes a meeting space, a non-verbal language capable of crossing cultural and political borders. It is a diplomatic gesture that showcases Southern Italy as a landscape of vision, not nostalgia».
Under the direction of M° Michelangelo Galeati, the ensemble features M° Fabio Crescente on double bass, Kim Sun Yang, the celebrated Korean bandoneonist, along with an orchestra of professors and young musicians selected from the project’s partner Conservatories.
«Performing in a place like the UN in Geneva gives a different meaning to our work», states Fabio Crescente, scientific coordinator of MUSIC4D. «This music originates from cinema, but today it speaks of identity, roots, and the future. To have it resonate here demonstrates that Italian music education can engage on equal footing with major international stages».
The performance is enhanced by an advanced technological component: motion sensors transform the conductor’s gestures into real-time sound and light, while a platform developed by the project’s partner University translates rhythms and frequencies into visual geometries, also generated by artificial intelligence, creating an immersive audiovisual narrative.
The Geneva event represents a key step in the international journey of MUSIC4D. Led by the Alessandro Scarlatti Conservatory of Palermo and supported by PNRR funds, the project is establishing itself as an integrated model of higher education, cultural production, and technological innovation.After America, the United Nations. “From Morricone to Bacalov” confirms that the musical imagination of Southern Italy, when met with research and vision, can transform into a globalgrammar, capable of inspiring, connecting, and fostering exchange in the very places where the world’s future is being built.
