La Tosca Italian Mambo Ensemble
was founded in 2014 in the neighborhood of Pilsen, Chicago by Andrea Falcone.
He initiated the band to share his Italian musical roots and quickly rose the attention of musicians of different cultural backgrounds. The complete form of the band consists in an accordion/voice, a violin/mandolin, two guitars/trumpet, a bass and a drum.
Our little orchestra is a melting pot of Italian, American, French and Polish souls and the songs we are presenting are a consequence of a collective memory, combined with our individual musical sensitivity and initiatives.
We perform a repertoire from the 1850’s to the 1950’s from Italy mostly, but also French gypsy jazz, Tango, Neapolitan classics.
This musical period is of particular importance to us as it has seen the beginning of audio recordings, the effervecense of Jazz, the end of tonal classical music, the exaltation of folk music, the birth of Tango , the rise of Gypsy jazz and the creation of the iconic Neapolitan singing.
Andrea Falcone
grew up in Milan to a Sicilian/Sardinian family. He studied Contemporary Art at the Academia di Brera in Milan and specialized in photogrpahy.
He worked as a fashion photographer and teacher of history of photography in Milan, Santiago del Chile and Buenos Aires notably. He established himself in Chicago in 2013 and decided to invest more time into his musical dreams. Passionate about music since the age of 15, Andrea taught himself accordion and guitar starting with southern Italian traditional music such as tarentellas, pizzicas and tammuriatas and dedicated his time to sudying the lives of his favorite performers and composers.
Stephanie Pielok
was born in Paris to Polish parents. She started studying violin at the age of 7 and entered the Conservatory at 14. She left to Canada at 18 to study Violin Performance with the Russian master Vladimir Landsman. In 2010 she was invited to pursue a Master’s degree in Violin Performance by the virtuoso Ilya Kaler at the DePaul University. Mrs. Pielok has performed in venues such as the Carnegie Hall in New York, the Symphony Center in Chicago, the Berlin Konzerthaus, the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris and performs regularly different orchestras such as the Oistrakh Symphony Orchestra, the Arts orchestra of Chicago, the Rockford Symphony, etc… She has made her debut with the Armenian State Orchestra in the fall 2019 and was invited to perform witht the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra under Maestro Sergey Smbatyan.
Andrea Falcone and Stephanie Pielok are the leaders of La Tosca Italian Mambo ensemble and regularly collaborate wih :
Princi - Starbucks Reserve, Chicago Eataly, Chicago Olive Garden, Istituto Italiano Di Cultura, Italian Chamber of Commerce of the Midwest, Green Mill Jazz club, Navy Pier, Miller Lite beer Garden, Mccaffery Architets Group.
We believe that music represents the story of the places, the people, their imagination, expectations, dreams and disillusions, and is an irreplaceable testimony of the past.
La Tosca is the Award winner for best entertainment as Cocktail band of 2017, voted by The Best of Chicago Magazine.
