We Speak Music
I Musici Gemelli Release New Album “The Art of the Duo”
It is refreshing to listen to two violins and nothing else. No orchestra to hide behind, no piano to fill the space. Just two instruments in conversation. That’s what brothers Francesco Pio Bertozzi and Giuseppe Pio Bertozzi offer on their new album “The Art of the Duo,” released through Hunnia Records & Film Production.
I Musici Gemelli have been building their reputation quietly in Foggia, and this album shows exactly why people keep coming back to hear them play. The brothers have clearly spent years studying the classical masters who wrote for violin duos in the 18th and 19th centuries, but they’re not just museum curators carefully preserving old pieces. They bring something fresh to this music without trampling all over it.
“Our music focuses on the interaction between the two instruments,” the duo explains. “We pay close attention to melody and the harmonic balance that can be achieved when two violins work together. Each piece becomes a dialogue.”
That dialogue is the real heart of this recording. You can hear them listening to each other, responding, challenging, agreeing. It’s the kind of interplay that only comes from serious technical skill combined with the kind of intuitive understanding that siblings sometimes have. They know when to step forward and when to pull back too.
What strikes me most is how accessible they make this music. Classical violin duos can sometimes feel academic or stiff, but Francesco Pio and Giuseppe Pio manage to honor the tradition while keeping things engaging for modern listeners. There’s warmth here, real emotion threading through the technical precision.
The album shines a light on the surprising range you can get from just two violins; it is quite surprising. Each track reveals different textures and moods, proving that you don’t need a full ensemble to create something compelling. The clarity and balance they achieve is remarkable.
Listen here.
Michele Ducci has unveiled the second single, ‘Woman Like You’, from his forthcoming album and animated film ‘Snail in the Clouds’.
‘Woman Like You’ pairs bright distorted electric guitar with an electronic drumbeat, adding in Ducci’s soulful vocals and a catchy uplifting chorus with Letizia Mandoleisi’s sweet vocal harmonies. A vintage organ pedalboard operated by Ducci simultaneously generates chords, bass and rhythm, like a one-man band. Shane Kennedy (Girl in the Year Above) joins in on guitar. Simon Milner (Is Tropical, Ysing) recorded and produced the track at his 4am Studios in London.
The album and film tell the story of a planet called ‘Snail’, inhabited by hybrids – primarily a mixture between scorpions, snails and humans – who lead a life according to the style of Pythagoras, devoted to music. There is also a cloud man named Agostos, a writer of musical operettas, who together with a talking smoke machine called Doctor Subtilis, begins to kill all hybrids, targeting in particular the hybrid musician Diodoros and his band, in an effort to steal the ark of melodies, an ancient ship that allows the whole planet to survive with music and joy.
The video for the single, created and animated by Ducci and Mandoleisi, delves further into the realm of planet ‘Snail’:
Says Ducci, “The ark of melodies, after various attempts, finally starts to work and fly in the planet Snail, while the shady Doc. Sub. and Agostos, with their platoon of soldiers made of foggy smoke, spy the miracle, planning to steal the ark for their evil and tyrannical purposes.”
About the track, Michele says, “I wrote this song for my love Letizia. Love seen from the mind is the sound we make. Sound is the love of matter.
We used a Technics synthesizer organ from a flea market. I tried to find a mood that was right for the song and I started using the bass of the pedal board together with the synth and the drums, and it was magical to hear the song reveal itself all coming from a single instrument. Leti was singing with me and we recorded everything live in one shot. Then we made Shane do the guitar flight, as if he came out of the window. The idea was to maintain disproportions, guitar thrust and synth drum thinness a la Haroumi Hosono, so as to create an estrangement, but naturally: it’s about how I listen, with close up something that captures me in its nuance as element of a larger orchestra somewhere. I’m glad we decided in the studio with Simon to use the layers of arrangement as the close-ups in the cinema; they look like strange enlargements that perch on parts of a mutated orchestra. I’m happy to come back with this love song at a time when everything seems to opt, even my labor in managing the flows of selfishness that have poured out on me while doing this album, for the sound of war. I’m here happy to be able to say that the sound of love always wins as did for me. Snail in the clouds is one of the most important works in my life and I am glad to start from pure love for this album that is my son.”
The album and full-length film will be released on the 5th of June on Monotreme Records.
Michele and Letizia’s previous musical short film, ‘The Great Book of Nature’, is an official selection for the 2026 Venice Shorts Film Festival.
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