FEDERICO COSTANZA

Storia ignota di un segreto nervo rivoluzionario
2018, 1st version for voice and live electronics
 

Federico Costanza is composer and sound artist/maker. He has been graduated in Piano, in Composition and in Electronic Music (with Alvise Vidolin) at the Music Conservatory of Venice. Artistic residence at ZKM Institute in Karlsruhe. Several courses, as composer, with S. Sciarrino, B. Furrer, P. Billone, M. Levinas, T. Murail, G. Manzoni, A. Di Scipio, A. Richard, etc. Performances of his works at: Spazionovecento XXIV in Cremona 29° Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte di Montepulciano, ASTRA Concerts in Australia, Biennale Musica di Venezia, XVIII Colloquium on Musical Informatics in Turin, Music Village 2011 in Greece, Art’s Birthday ZKM/HfG and SWR radio, Radio UNAM in Messico City, Music@villaromana in Florence, Arizona State University, Symphonic Season of Teatro La Fenice, Musica/Realtà Festival in Milan, #Siena2015Lab at Accademia Chigiana, at PLIVKA in Kiev, etc. His music and project has been performed by: Lugano Percussion Group, Mircea Ardeleanu, Young Janácek Philharmonic Orchestra, Anna D'Errico, Kreutzer Quartet, DissonART ensemble, Beat Furrer, Liminar, ASU Contemporary Percussion Ensemble, Orchestra La Fenice, Stefano Montanari, Ex-novo ensemble, Alfonso Alberti, Luigi Gaggero and Ukho esemble etc. Commissions received from some institutions such as: Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte– Montepulciano; Astra Society–Melbourne; La Biennale di Venezia; Infidi Lumi Company; Scuola di Musica di Fiesole, arTree company, Fondazione Teatro La Fenice di Venezia, Associazione Nuova Consonanza of Rome, M° L. Pestalozza president of Associazione Amici di Musica/Realtà of Milan, etc. Collaborations and musical compositions for dance projects as: Twothousand | All! by Kinkaleri and performed in Florence; VN Serenade by dancemaker Cristina Kristal Rizzo and performed in LAC Lugano. And for theatre/performance/ installation projects by Stefano Tomassini. He has been invited by INCOMMON at the symposium La Lotta per il Teatro # 01, dialogues and meetings on contemporary performing arts, where he performed a concert with his electro acoustic music at the IUAV University of Venice. Some of his works are published and recorded by Ars Publica Edition, Report #00, Rivo Alto and broadcasted by Radio UNAM (Messico), SWR2 (Germany), Rai Radio3 (Italy). He is working on some projects around the amplified toy piano, and the focus is the development of the relation between the instrument and the figure of the “composer/performer/maker”. His musical and spatial research of sound is conceived as a continuous experimentation that does not allow an axiom or an opportunity and are manifested both in his electronic compositions or in his purely acoustic writing. 

http:// federicocostanza.wix.com/home, http://soundcloud.com/ federico-costanza


Storia ignota di un segreto nervo rivoluzionario (2018 – first version) for amplified voice and electronics on poetic texts by Anna Laura Longo. A voice in a desert and in a large space, is searching for the “sound of a poetic word". Alchemical-sonorous maps are used to find a new time, a different practice. A listening and encounter/performance with the Listening itself. These maps of an unknown tale of a secret revolutionary nerve, are based on the poetic writings by Anna Laura Longo, words and traces that invite to cross thresholds. More and more, I believe, poetical thinking - in all its manifestations - is today necessary to cross thresholds and change things. 

1. Suolo di protuberanze e(t) spremo e(t) spargo passo alato (taken from Procedure esfolianti, 2011, Manni edition.)
2. La spinta viene da terra 

nel vortice così come nel nervo
di una causa rivoluzionaria.
La spinta viene da terra,
malgrado la terra blindata.
(taken from PLASMA – Sottomultipli del tema “Ricordo”, 2004, Fermenti edition.)



MAURILIO CACCIATORE

Tutorial 1#:mimesi, 2018, for voice, reoorders and live electronics

Maurilio Cacciatore’s music stems out of a combination of acoustical instruments with tools for digital music. It also incorporates electromechanical objects and uses various resources of informatics. It results in complex, multi-layered texture, presenting on the surface classical instruments and electronics, while containing an inner core of hybrid and non conventional techniques. Beyond the conventional standard of spatialization, Maurilio Cacciatore’s loudspeaker setups explore non-coded solutions that integrate hardware and software within various musical contents. The theatrical dimension of his works tends to integrate visual aspects and music into the score, seeking an improvement of communication among the players on stage. He has been composer in residence at the Studios of the Ircam, the ZKM, the Muse en Circuit of Paris and the Elektronisches Studio Basel. He has been student of Fabio Cifariello Ciardi and Ivan Fedele, always obtaining the beast marks in Italy, Sweden and France. He is currently working toward a PhD at the Catholic University of Porto and the Academy of Music of Basel under the guidance of Erik Oña. He is lecturer of Electroacoustic Composition at the Conservatory of Castelfranco Veneto (Italy). Maurilio is active as composer, professor and researcher in Europe, Asia, North America and Australia. He has been performed by first class ensemble and Institutions such as: Ensemble Intercontemporain, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre National de Lorraine, I Pomeriggi Musicali, Hanatsu miroir, Ensemble Linea, Proxima Centauri, Kammerorchester Basel, Ensemble Phoenix Basel, Aleph, L’arsenale, Algoritmo, Sentieri Selvaggi, Contempoartensemble, Choir Le Cris de Paris, Voix de Strass. Among the soloists who performed his music: Mario Caroli, Emanuele Torquati, Matteo Cesari, Maruta Staravoitava, In 2008 he co-founded the Ensemble L’Imaginaire. His music is published by the Edizioni Suvini Zerboni, Milan. 

http://www.mauriliocacciatore.com/



Tutorial 1: #mimesi. I am starting a new cycle of works inspired by the video tutorials that can be found on YouTube or other similar video platforms. These videos explain how to carry out particular actions (also in the realm of everyday life, like repairing domestic appliances or cooking recipes) and, in the musical field, how to tackle a performing technique on an instrument or how to resolve a given passage. Some of these videos I found very useful because they allowed me to get one or two suggestions (you can even find videos made by people thousands of kilometers away who decided to offer a contribution on the same subject independently) regarding certain doubts that arose while writing my works. The second source of inspiration are the tags used in many social networks; the iconicity of the words used for the tags leads their meaning to be structured as a conceptual category. This helps readers to understand the meaning of the texts, because categorization simplifies the process of analyzing the symbolic contents. Providing a category moves the attention to a subject and allows the understanding of a message to be reassessed depending on the point of view. Third and last, this cycle is inspired by the well known Lessons of Fausto Romitelli. From the cycle of the composer of the Bad Trips I have taken inspiration simply from the metaphor of the title in its absolute sense, that is the idea of a lesson about something. Tutorial is the name of this cycle that intends to offer a point of view on certain aspects of my musical writing from the end of the 2010s. #mimesi is the first number in this series: two very different instruments like the male voice and the sub-bass recorder find common ground in order to blend with one another, without renouncing the physiology of the individual instrument and its typical writing, its own instrumental rhetoric, its own role in general. Mimesis is a technique of sound construction that I learned in my years as an apprentice in France and makes it possible to link instruments and electro acoustic sources by means of timbres that are overlapping if not exactly common to both. In this piece I try to do all this, starting from an instrument with an extremely connoted writing like the sub-bass recorder and the male voice, with all the difficulty the use of the human voice has in chamber writing. The voice is treated first and foremost as an instrument, therefore without any true spoken text; gradually a text (merely words coming from various languages and often making no sense; and yet, they “camouflage” themselves in the idea that they could be foreign words of a language we don’t know) emerges, but for such a short time that it cannot effectively affirm itself in terms of critical comprehension. The annulment of time helps the mixing of the timbres as there is no clear segmentation of the melodic material; a very slow tempo, often bordering on the limits of the breathing possibilities of the musicians, characterizes the whole work».

SIMONE CONFORTI

WhatAreWeWaitingFor, 2018, for male singer, live electronics and live video

WeWillNeverBeGreatAgain, 2017, for male singer, recorders and live electronics

PlastiCity, 2023, fixed media

MiserereForOurIndifference,
2023, fixed media

Simone Conforti, composer, computer music designer, sound designer and software developer. Graduated in Flute and Electronic Music in Florence and in Electronic Music Composition in Perugia, works as professor at  IRCAM in Paris. Currently PhD candidate at the Basel University, he is working on a research which combines music composition with automatic audio data segmentation and recognition, through unsupervised neural networks.  Specialised in interactive arts and multimedia, his work passes also through an intense activity of music oriented technology design, in these fields he has developed many algorithms for sound spatialisation and space virtualisation, for noise masking, and for generative music and automatic composition. Co-founder and CTO of MUSI-CO formerly co-founded MusicFit and MUSST (multisensing space studio); these companies share a deep inclination towards the audio technology innovation and are characterised by the development of novel and proprietary methods and algorithms applied to music research. These range from aided composition, to architectural design through sounds, reaching sound processing. He has been teaching as professor in Electroacoustic at Cuneo’s and Florence’s Conservatoires and has been working as researcher for the HEM Geneva, the MARTLab in Florence in the field of sound digitisation and computer music design and for the HEMU in Lausanne where he was involved to develop a new hyper-instrument based on motion detection applied to the Paetzold Recorders, he has also been working for the company Architettura Sonora as sound designer and software developer.  He has published for AIB, ISTI Institute, Biennale Musica (Venice), Suvini Zerboni, Mudima Music, ET’CETERA, die Schachtel, Cramps, Stradivarius, Dissonance, Artestampa and A14.

http://www.temporoom.net/en/simone_conforti.php

WeWillNeverBeGreatAgain. Un théâtre non théâtral, une tentative de regarder la réalité détachée de son réalisme apparent, un effort de changer de perspective, de reformuler et de souligner la crise de la mentalité occidentale commune et le populisme ambiant ayant conduit à la situation politique actuelle. L'année 2016 s'est achevée par une série de réponses inattendues de la part de la population du monde occidental envers l'instabilité économique et l'insécurité causée par la réorganisation des équilibres mondiaux. Une sorte de cycle qui peut être vu de façon plus terrifiante encore que les mécanismes populistes qui ont détruit l'humanité au siècle dernier. Plutôt qu'un sentiment de terreur, il existe de nos jours une technique sournoise de l'enchantement et la fausse amitié rattachée à un humour grotesque. Ces contrastes, ces contradictions et le ridicule de la situation, en regard du message tragique qui les accompagne, ont provoqué en moi le besoin de les raconter dans une forme musicale. Le seul moyen que j'ai trouvé pour y parvenir était d'essayer d'accentuer la profonde violence qui anime ce vieux/nouveau vent politique. Cette composition est pensée comme une pièce de théâtre fantastique dans laquelle rien n'est théâtral dans une forme humaine mais où tout est imprégné d'un récit communiqué par le son. Tout reste au niveau de la musique et celle-ci prend la forme d'un outil qui permet de méditer sur ce qui est réellement encore entre nos mains après avoir effacé l'impact de l'image de propagande politique mentionnée précédemment. Grâce à la liberté que me donne le façonnage du son, j'ai pu utiliser le même langage sournois et modifier le sens, implicite et explicite, d'extraits de discours politiques sortis de leur contexte. Reformuler les nombreuses contradictions qui y sont contenues, loin de leur indissociable connexion à l'image politique, m'a permis de souligner le fait que, dans le contexte politique actuel, une même personne peut se contredire de manière répétitive sans provoquer de réel scandale parmi les électeurs endormis.



WhatAreWeWaitingFor. What happens to the spirit of human beings deprived of their identity and their dignity? Where is the boundary between the reality that they imagine and what they really live? These questions make my mind tremble when I think of all those who escape from what they often can not even understand, looking for what they do not know and perhaps will never know. There is a land that I closely know and to which I am intimately linked, from which since many years a great migration is happening and is therefore responsible for the loss of everything for many human beings, up to life itself. These people's disappears are silenced and mutilated by the neglect and the economic interests of the rich West that sometimes wakes up from its torpor to move public opinion to his advantage, keeping hidden the bloody reality that these people face for the only reason that drives them to challenge this journey, the survival of their species, as if this latter were different from ours. Thus, how changes the vision of the World and of the reality, deformed concerning the conscious and the unconscious of the abused and the disfigured of all dignity? I have attempted to draw, through the sounds, the continuous paradox that runs through the mind of these human beings, imagining, through the musical gesture, to describe what happens in the dreaming moments that are opposed to what happens in the awake. As if night and day overturned their function and the remaining life was only that linked to memory that still represents a sense for which to resist. In the night the memory of what has been left resounds welcoming and reassuring while the reality of the day corresponds to an absence of light, to uncertainty, and the violence and the noise that surrounds it is silence, the silence of deprivation. It is a dialectic musical path, that puts the voice of a singer in comparison with a electronically elaborated chant. A real man put in comparison to the reminiscences of a woman's voice, belonging to those places of misery, which is transfigured by its memory representation as well as by the  experienced violence that transforms the sound figure. WhatAreWeWaitingFor is articulated through the constant contraposition of the sonic absence with the vibrant life of a distant folklore. The profound processing of sounds and voices, coming from countries that we believe distant from us, migrate into a sonic construct that does not belong directly to just certain geographical areas but becomes a place of sensorial sharing through which the physical (the voice in scene) and the synthetic (the electronic) collaborate without distinction of belonging. The music timbre is contaminated and becomes the only truly voice absent of prejudice in the clash of cultures. Fundamental in this lyric work is the scenography, which is obtained through a non traditional experiencing dimension, where the public is asked to move during the work development, and passing throughout the darkness of an abandoned hospital in order to reach the feeble and obsessive light of the rooms where the work takes life. Therefore, two musical aspect are inquired through this arrangement, an immersive and non filtered listening dimension to the public, as a kind of cooperative happening, as well as the investigation of an alternative perspective of the musical listening, which depends on the performative spaces and it is profoundly connected to their architecture.




ANDREA DAMIANO COTTI

Lo-li-ta!, 2018,
Variazioni su un tema di Vladimir Nabokov, 1st version for male voice and recorders

Andrea Damiano Cotti was born in Italy in 1985. He studied at the Conservatorio “Giuseppe Verdi” in Turin (IT) with G.Elos, G.M.Guida and D.Tabbia and qualified in both choral conducting (2008) and composition (2012) with full marks. He took his degree “summa cum laude” in Literature at the Turin University (2014) presenting a musicologic study on Max Reger's works. In 2014 he received the "De Sono" scholarship to continue his musical studies. In June 2016 he received his Diploma di Alto Perfezionamento in Composition from the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, where he studied with Ivan Fedele.Andrea Damiano Cotti is active in various musical fields: he teaches piano and musical theory, leads the orchestra “Musica Manens and, since 2011, is the Music Director of the choir “Musicainsieme” in Chieri (Italy). Andrea Damiano Cotti wrote a large number of works, many of them received national and international awards: First prize of Competition ‘Benedetto XVI’ in Rome (2013), First Prize of the V International Composition Competition ‘Claxica’ (2013), First prize in the 3rd International Composition Competition “RDS” (2013), Second prize at the "A.Giovannini" competition (2014), Special mention and medal of the Camera dei Deputati della Repubblica Italiana given by the jury of the International composition competition Citta' di Udine(2016). In march 2016 he was admitted tas finalist in the International Competition “Premio Trio di Trieste - Giampaolo Coral Award”. In june 2017 he has been awarded with the Special mention by the “EstOvest Festival”.He was selected as composer by the festival "Risuonanze" (2015), in the same year was chosen by the jury of the “Divertimento Ensemble” to take part to the first “International Workshop for Young Composers” in Bobbio (2015) where he attended masterclasses with Sandro Gorli, Stefano Gervasoni and Michael Jarrell. He won the first prize of the “Stresa composition competition” (2018) and the first prize at the “London Ear Festival”(2018). His works are published by “Verlag fur neue Musik – Berlin”.




LUCIANO BERIO

Luciano Berio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luciano_Berio
IVAN FEDELE

Tellus, 2019
world premiere version for bass flute, live electronics and visuals (live at Biennale Venezia 2019, Teatro Piccolo Arsenale)

Ivan Fedele
http://www.ivanfedele.eu




STEFANO GERVASONI

Romper del dia, 2014,
poems by Jose Angel Valente, arr. for recorder and voice, 2018

Born in Bergamo in 1962, Stefano Gervasoni began studying composition in 1980 on the advice of Luigi Nono: this encounter, as well as others with Brian Ferneyhough, Peter Eötvös and Helmut Lachenmann, turned out to be decisive for his career. After attending the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi in Milan, Stefano Gervasoni studied with György Ligeti in Hungary in 1990, and then, in 1992, he attended the IRCAM Course in Composition and in Computer Music in Paris. The first three years in France launched Gervasoni's international career that eventually led him to be artist-in-residence at Villa Medici in Rome for the biennium1995-1996. With commissions from prestigious institutions such the WDR, the SWR, the Orchestra Nazionale della RAI, the Münchner Kammerorchester, the Festival d'Automne in Paris, Radio France, IRCAM, the Casa da Musica in Porto, the Festival Archipel in Geneva, the Divertimento Ensemble in Milan, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Ensemble Modern, the Ensemble Contrechamps in Geneva, the Maerzmusik festival in Berlin, the Ars Musica Bruxelles, the Festival Musica in Strasbourg, the French Ministry of Culture, Milan Teatro alla Scala and Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Stefano Gervasoni has established himself as one of the most important Italian composers of his generation. His catalogue – which includes chamber and vocal music, concertos, works for orchestra, for ensemble and an opera (Limbus-Limbo), commissioned for the 50th anniversary of the Percussions de Strasbourg (2012) – was first published by Ricordi, from 1987, and then, from 2000, by Suvini Zerboni. A monographic CD entitled Antiterra, which features the pieces An, Animato, Antiterra, Least Bee, Godspell, and Epicadenza, released in 2008 by Aeon, bears witness to «a sonic world of great wealth, subtlety, refinement, expressive but also organic, that immediately captures one’s attention» (Philippe Albèra). Other monographic recording collections include the Harmonia Mundi CD in the series Musique Française d'Aujourd'hui (Ensemble Contrechamps), the Stradivarius CD by Divertimento Ensemble and the CD Dir-in dir released in 2014 by Winter & Winter (Académie Charles Cros price and Diapason d'or in France). A recent CD by Winter & WInter, released in 2016, entitled Le pré includes the three books of a piano cycle. Winner of numerous prizes, including the recent Premio della Critica Musicale "Franco Abbiati" (2010), his work has allowed him to be a grant-holder at the Fondation des Treilles in Paris (1994) and at the DAAD in Berlin (2006) and composer-in-residence at the Domaine de Kerguéhennec during the period 2008-2010. He has also been invited to teach at the Darmstadt Ferienkurse, on the courses organised by the Fondation Royaumont (Paris), at Toho University in Tokyo, at the Festival International di Campos do Jordão in Brazil, at the Conservatory in Shanghai, at Columbia University (New York), at Harvard University (Boston) and at Takefu International Music Festival. He has been composer-in-residence at Lausanne Conservatoire (2005) and at Yellow Barn Summer Academy (Vermont, 2016). Moreover, he has been visiting professor at ESMUC in Barcelona for the 2012-13 academic year. Since 2006 Stefano Gervasoni has held a regular teaching post as professor of composition at the prestigious Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse in Paris. The musicologist Philippe Albèra wrote a substantial book on Stefano Gervasoni's work, Stefano Gervasoni. Le parti pris des sons, published in 2015 by Editions Contrechamps (Geneva). 

http://www.stefanogervasoni.net/


Di questi sei componimenti poetici (
HorizonteEl bosqueTamquam centrum circuliNi siquieraIslaAnónimo: versión) di José Angel Valente, poeta spagnolo morto nel 2001, vorrei esprimere musicalmente tutta la particolare forza dispiegata in un’estrema varietà di registri, così caratteristica delle pagine di questa sua ultima e incompiuta raccolta (Fragmentos de un libro futuro, Barcelona, 2000). Dalla confessione intima all’osservazione metafisica, dall’osservazione contemplativa all’invettiva civile, dall’autobiografia pressoché fisica del decadimento del proprio corpo alla costruzione di un pensiero quasi filosofico, tutti questi aspetti si tengono in un’unità fragile e resistente nello stesso tempo: come la morte incipiente del poeta (le cui premesse sono evocate in alcune poesie della raccolta) o il romper del día che, grazie alle sfumature della lingua castigliana, connota di un elemento di rottura il farsi e rinnovarsi del giorno. Questa dimensione esplosiva, quasi schizofrenica eppure unitaria e coerente, appartenente a una persona e a una personalità poetica a tutto tondo, è alla base dell’idea di concepire controtenore e corno come un unicum: entrambi incarnazione della voce, o delle voci che rompono la voce del poeta, si disfano in essa, la fanno in tutta la sua complessità di pensieri, passioni, emozioni, idee, sensazioni; entrambi tentanti di sostituirsi l’uno all’altro, reciprocamente, o di oltrepassare la propria natura, dal puro suono alla parola e viceversa, dalla fisicità animale o materiale al puro concetto e viceversa. Ma sempre in unità, una “eterogenu(i)nità”. Stefano Gervasoni, 29.4.14


INTERMINABLE término al que llego,
donde nada termina,
donde el no ser empieza
interminablemente a ser 
pura inminencia.
                       
                      (Horizonte) 

+++

A Jacques Ancet    

To a green thought in a green shade   
Andrew Marvell  
 
EL espesor del bosque,
su verde luz oscura,
la voz que llama adonde,
el borde, el límite
donde comienzan los senderos
que a su vez se entrecruzan
y se anulan hasta el súbito claro, repentino
lugar de un dios
que aquí se manifiesta,
¿cuál dios?,
podríamos hacer en él nuestra morada,
en esta claridad,
al menos hasta el tiempo de las lluvias
para identificar aún nuestro camino
en la hierba pisada, para qué, jamás
podríamos volver, pues los senderos
se cruzan infinitos en el bosque,
me llama el bosque todavía
y la naturaleza madre me reduce,
me asume en sí, me devuelve a la nada.
                                             (El bosque)   

+++

LA memoria nos abre luminosos
corredores de sombra.
 
Bajamos lentos por su lenta luz
hasta la entraña de la noche.
 
El rayo de tiniebla.
 
Descendí hasta su centro,
puse mi planta en un lugar en donde
penetrar no se puede
si se quiere el retorno.
 
Se oye tan sólo una infinita escucha.
 
Bajé desde mí mismo
hasta tu centro, dios, hasta tu rostro
que nadie puede ver y sólo
en esta cegadora, en esta oscura
explosión de la luz se manifiesta.
                                            (Tamquam centrum circuli)  
+++

TODO parecería ahora
llevarte a la extinción.
                                            Abandonado
de la sola palabra que tal vez aún podría
levantarme hacia ti.
                                       No estás.
                                                         No está
la tu sola palabra.
 
Se espesa en torno el reino de lo gris.
 
Un ave cae
del centro mismo de su vuelo.
                                                          El agua
del manantial, impura, ciega
los pozos de la sed.
                                      En esta noche
no busques luz ni abrigo,
no busques lealtad
ni amor.
                 Estás sentado
enfrente de ti mismo y ni siquiera
puedes mirarte con piedad.
                                             (Ni siquiera)
+++

SALIR del tiempo.
Suspender el claro  
corazón del día.
                                Ave.
                                         Palabra.
Vuelo en el vacío.
                                  En lo nunca
posible.
Ven, anégame en este largo olvido.
 
Ya no hay puentes:
                              Sosténme en el no tiempo,
en la no duración,
en el lugar donde no estoy, no soy, o sólo
en el seno secreto de las aguas.
                                             (Isla)
+++  

CIMA del canto.
El ruiseñor y tú
ya sois lo mismo.
                                             (Anónimo: versión)   

José Ángel Valente,
Fragmentos de un libro futuro,

Galaxia Gutenberg - Círculo de Lectores,
Barcelona, 2000.