Upper St. Clair graduate gets firsthand look at Italian music scene
One moment, she was about to descend a stairway outside the majestic St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice. The next:
Ouch.
“I took a bad step off it and rolled my ankle entirely,” Alexandra Mecs reported. “It was unfortunate, but I was determined to not let that bother me. So I bought an Ace bandage, iced it for the rest of the night and kept going.”
The Upper St. Clair resident continued to travel through the major cities of Italy during a recent Point Park University study trip just prior to her 2018 graduation. Part of her motivation for traveling to Europe is her heritage: Alex’s family is from Hungary, and she remembers visiting there when she was young.
Vising Venice during the Point Park University study program to Italy were, from left, Jillian Svonavec, Jessica Martin and Alexandra Mecs, with faculty members Angela Isaac and Patrick Mulvihill.
“I’ve always been interested in going back when I was older and I could experience more,” she said. “And I was always told by just about anybody who’s gone to college that if you have a chance to study abroad, absolutely do it. They weren’t wrong.”
From an educational perspective, mecs was working on her bachelor’s in sports, arts and entertainment management, with an emphasis on the entertainment aspect and even more on music. As such, she was interested in learning all about the music scene in Italy.
Given the nation’s history and culture, the operatic and classical genres would seem to be front and center. And that’s true to a degree, from Mecs’ observations.
“It seemed like a lot of the classical venues were in the most tourist-dense areas. It’s more for tourists than it is for the locals,” she said. “Whenever I spoke with some of the local people, they all said that they listen to American artists.”
Local television seemed to offer confirmation.
“When I was holed up in my hotel in Venice icing my ankle, I was watching Italian MTV all night,” Mecs recalled. “What I noticed is they would alternate very often between an Italian artist and an American artist: Italian to American, every other.”
Regarding the former, the music videos she saw most often featured singer Edoardo D’Erme, who goes by the professional name of Calcutta and apparently is the Justin Bieber of Italy, as far as general public recognition.
“But then a lot of people, when I asked, they would say, ‘Oh, I listen to Smashing Pumpkins.’ Or, ‘I like Deftones.’ So they listen to a lot of artists that I listen to,” Mecs said.
She also noticed a preponderance of street performers in the cities of Italy.
“That’s what I sort of associated with their music scene, as there are a lot of these artists who would get licenses to perform in certain areas,” she explained.
And there’s quite the variety of talent.
“You can see just about anything,” Mecs said. “I took a video of this gentleman who was playing a double guitar, and then he had another guitar that he strung up as a bass. And he would play both at the same time. He was playing three parts, basically, and it was so impressive and sounded beautiful.”
Performances aren’t limited to music:
“There was also a puppet show. I didn’t think that was still a thing, but someone did a marionette puppet show.”
Back in the United States, the 2014 Upper St. Clair High School graduate is firmly entrenched in working with Pittsburgh concert promoter Opus One Productions, doing a variety of tasks as called for at venues throughout the region.
“I’ve managed to build up my schedule pretty well after just graduating,” she said.
And, knock on wood, she won’t have to worry about getting around on a sprained ankle.