Fernando Mencherini
La pista (1991) - 8'
For soprano saxophone [Stereo]
In the nineties, Mencherini's musical production, while remaining highly recognizable, entered a sort of second phase, characterized by the search for new expressive possibilities, aimed at freeing sound from excessive complexity in favor of an original lyricism.
La pista offers a significant example of this passage.
Fernando Mencherini
Piangere la pietra - III Studio sul Disoriente (1996) - 5'
Version for baritone saxophone and voice - text taken from Laborintus (14) by Edoardo Sanguineti; voice recorded on tape by Edoardo Sanguineti (1996) [Stereo]
The encounter between Mencherini's music and the poetry of Edoardo Sanguineti (as well as with the poet himself) was favored by the 1996 edition of the Rassegna di Nuova Musica in Macerata, but goes far beyond the occasional commission, so much so that Mencherini composed five pieces based on as many poems from the poet’s collection Laborintus. In Piangere la pietra it is the poet himself who reads his text, dialoguing and clashing with the impetus of the saxophone.
Biography
Fernando Mencherini (1949 in Fermignano – 1997 in Cagli)
He attended the Conservatory “G. Rossini” in Pesaro, studying electronic music with Walter Branchi. His career as a composer began in 1977 and he soon gained much respect in avant-garde circles. His works have been performed at major contemporary music festivals throughout Europe and in America, by leading musicians including the Arditti Quartet, Fausto Bongelli, Lucia Bova, Francesco Dillon, Claudio Jacomucci, Massimo Mazzoni, Annamaria Morini, Enzo Porta, Ciro Scarponi, Stefano Scodanibbio and the poet Edoardo Sanguineti.
He was an eclectic musician, refusing to be bound by a single harmonic language, with an amazing ability to renew himself. His scores are worked very finely, but always driven by human impulses expressed with a vital energy and frenetic tension that transmit immediately to the listener.
Roberto Doati
Il domestico di Edgar (1996-…) - 7’
A ruled improvisation for alto saxophone and tape (Octandre ad libitum) []
In 1995 I was requested from Claudio Ambrosini to write a work with instrument and electronics to be performed by his Ex Novo Ensemble. It had to be part of a collection of works commissioned to different composers with peculiar indications: they could have been arrangements from pop or jazz standards, with or without improvisation. I decided to work with a well-known italian jazz saxophone player -Pietro Tonolo- to a piece where improvisation and electronics were closely connected each other, but within the classical XX century musical language. The concert with the first performances was fixed in the following year at Sale Apollinee, in the Gran Teatro La Fenice in Venezia. When the Teatro burned in January 1996 I was at the beginning of my work, and the bitterness and despondency that took me because of the loss of such a cultural and affective heritage were so strong that several times during the following years I tried to conclude it. In 2002 I can consider it finished but not complete, just as a “work in progress” could be, exactly as the theater rebuilding works are: until today they are not completed.
It is well known that in the last years of his life, Charlie Parker was more and more interested in classical XX century music. Once he called Edgar Varèse, asking him to have composition lessons. His wish was so strong that he volunteered to be Varèse waiter in case the money he offered had been considered not enough from the french composer. Finally Varèse accepted, but starting after his imminent trip to Europe. When Varèse came back, Parker was dead.
In my piece I try to bring this never happened meeting. The electronic part is based on Varèse Octandre, both from the sonological and formal point of view and on this tape -or the recording or real perfomance of Octandre- the saxophonist has to play following a score containing improvisation outlines often recalling be-bop style. Before the performance the solo saxophone is recorded, and some fragments are computer transformed and added to the electronic part for a next performance. So when a new saxophone player will perform the piece, he/she will improvise also on a previous improvisation. This rebuilding and “ruins” overlaying process will proceed while there will be a new saxophone player wishing to perform the piece.
Biography
Roberto Doati
Studied Electronic music with Albert Mayr and Pietro Grossi at the Firenze Music Conservatory, then in Venezia with Alvise Vidolin. From 1979 until 1989 he has been working as a composer and researcher at the Centro di Sonologia Computazionale, University of Padova. From 1983 to 1993 he was a staff member of L.I.M.B. (Laboratorio permanente per l'Informatica Musicale della Biennale di Venezia) editing its publications and involved in the realization of several projects, notably the exhibition “Nuova Atlantide”. Fellow and composer in residence in several places such as Centre de Recherches et de Formation Musicales de Wallonie in Liège, Rockefeller Foundation, MacDowell Colony. Currently he is Professor of Computer Music at the Conservatory “Giuseppe Nicolini” in Piacenza. Amongst the many project he realized here it is to be mentioned the creation of Galata Electroacoustic Orchestra (GEO) (2013). Its performance (conducted by him and Tolga Tüzün) of Compasso da navegare at La Biennale di Venezia Music Festival in 2014 received a 34th “Franco Abbiati” Italian Musical Critics Award. His compositions gave him international acknowledgements, notably two commissions from La Biennale di Venezia: in 1995 for L’olio con cui si condiscono le parole (voice and electronics), in 2005 for Un avatar del diavolo, a musical theatre work based on Antonin Artaud text. Since 2013 produces audiovisual works on the aesthetics of food such as Seppie senz’osso (video: Paolo Pachini), Il suono bianco (video: Maurizio Goina), Il suono rosso (video: Ivan Penov).
Carmine Emanuele Cella
Improvviso statico I (2012) - 12'
For sax alto and live electronics [Stereo]
Improvviso statico designs a narrative space made of "sonic" islands floating in a foggy sea. Without apparent reasons an isle gets closer or further, disappears and reappears transformed, in an unreal space in which distances are internals and relationships imaginary. Each isle represents a Moebius strip going from inside to outside continuously; in each isle the saxophone and live electronics create a fused sonic image, without hierarchies, priorities or time.
Dedicated to Enzo Filippetti and Giorgio Nottoli.
Gianpaolo Antongirolami, saxophone
LEMS (Electronic Laboratory for Experimental Music of the Rossini Conservatory), sound direction
Biography
Carmine Emanuele Cella
Carmine Emanuele Cella is an internationally renown composer and researcher in applied mathematics. He got a PhD in musical composition at the Accademia di S. Cecilia in Rome and a PhD in mathematical logic at the University of Bologna entitled On Symbolic Representations of Music (2011).
As a composer, he won many prizes, including the prestigious Petrassi prize for composition, from the President of the Italian Republic Giorgio Napolitano
From 2007 to 2008, Carmine-Emanuele Cella had a research position at Ircam in Paris working on audio indexing. He has been nominated member of Academie de France à Madrid for 2013-2014 at Casa de Velazquez. In 2015-2016, he has conducted research in applied mathematics at École Normale Supérieure de Paris with Stéphane Mallat. In 2016, he has been in residency at the American Academy in Rome, where he worked on his opera Pane, sale sabbia, that was premiered in June 2017 at the National Opera of Kiev. In 2019, he has been appointed assistant professor in music and technology at CNMAT - University of California, Berkeley.
Gianpaolo Antongirolami (Saxophone)
saxophonist with a classical background (Diploma in Saxophone with top honors in 1987, specialization courses with well known international saxophonists; Diploma in Electronic Music, Master’s Degree in Chamber Music), performs an intense musical activity proposing a repertoire ranging from the original compositions of the early twentieth century to modern and contemporary music, up to improvisation experiences.
He is regularly invited to important festivals and venues such as Milano Musica, Rassegna di Nuova Musica in Macerata, Sagra Musicale Umbra, Amici della Musica (Modena), Nachtstrom (Basel, CH), Area Sismica (Forlì), Firenze Suona Contemporanea, Ex Novo Musica (Venezia), Dissonanzen (Napoli), Casa Paganini (Genova), ZKM (Karlsruhe, DE), Fondazione Cini (Venezia). With a keen interest in research, innovation, and experimentation, for over twenty years he devotes himself to the dissemination of the electro-acoustic repertoire, working closely with the most important composers on international scene, playing at major venues like Festival Synthèse of Bourges (FR), InterActions (Bangor, UK), CIM (Firenze, Udine, Cagliari), Spaziomusica (Cagliari), La Terra Fertile (L’Aquila), MA/IN (Matera), I Venerdì del Conservatorio (Napoli), Acusmatiq (Ancona) and at the Conservatories of Avellino, Bari, Fermo, Foggia, Genova, Livorno, Napoli, Padova, Perugia, Pesaro, Piacenza, Salerno, Venezia.
Antongirolami also plays in various chamber ensembles, collaborating with world-famous musicians such as Terry Riley, Butch Morris, Giancarlo Schiaffini, Mike Svoboda, Stefano Scodanibbio, Garth Knox, Horacio Vaggione, Alvise Vidolin, Walter Prati, Roberto Fabbriciani, Claudio Lugo, Michele Lo Muto.
He world-premiered more than 80 compositions – in most cases dedicated to him – and released CDs for Cemat Italia, Ars Publica, Edipan, KHO Multimedia Productions, Khepera, Rara Music WorX, SuonoSonda, Sumtone.
Soprano chair of the Alea Saxophone Quartet, Gianpaolo has recently recorded the CD “Arvo Pärt – Anima” for the label col legno. “Anima” is the first-ever compilation of all compositions by Pärt that have been composed for saxophone quartet. The CD was soon greeted with worldwide popular and critical acclaim: in May 2018, just seven months after its market release, the downloads from various web platforms have reached the impressive number of 100.000.
Antongirolami is regularly giving masterclasses at various international universities, including Musikhochschule in Freiburg (DE), Universität Mozarteum in Salzburg (AT), Keele University, University of Edinburgh, Laban Conservatoire of Music and Goldsmiths University of London (UK), Conservatorio Superior de Musica of Sevilla (ES).
Antongirolami is teaching saxophone at the Conservatory of Perugia.
Juan Escudero (*)
Monólithos (2018) - 8'21"
Fixed medium [Octophonic]
This project is based on quasicrystal time sequences, singular algebraic hypersurfaces and Calabi-Yau varieties obtained recently by the author. They are defined with the help of polynomial solutions of an inhomogeneous Klein-Gordon equation, which is the relativistic wave equation describing spin zero particles and also wave phenomena in classical physics like the motion of two-dimensional sheets attached to elastic objects. The complex Calabi-Yau threefolds inhabit spaces in three complex dimensions (six real dimensions) and the geometric objects used are the shadows or projections in 2D. The basic sound material is generated with Csound from the Fourier analysis of certain time sequences and then it is modified by the "macroscopic" presence of shadows of Calabi-Yau shapes conjecturally existing in microscopic worlds.
Biography
Juan J. G. Escudero
Born in Hoyales (Burgos, Spain). Musical studies in Conservatories of Córdoba, Teruel and Madrid where he studied composition with Francisco Guerrero Marín. Techniques of algebra, geometry, topology, formal languages theory and astronomy, that he has developed in the field of scientific research, have been some of the guides of the formalization procedures in the temporal and spatial domains. Selections and performances include: Concorso Internazionale di Composizione Musicale Elettronica Pierre Schaeffer, Festival Internacional de Música Contemporánea de Alicante, ISCM-World Music Days-Music Biennale Zagreb, ISEA International Symposium on Electronic Art, etc.
Antonio Mazzotti (*)
On ne s'est jamais vus à TimeSSquare (2018) - 10'45"
Fixed medium [Quadraphonic]
These projects propose some practices in the field of autonomous systems art that generate complete work to tools for Computer-Aided Algorithm of music composition. For the type of the insights and the approach led, the theory and practice proposed can only be computational. The choice to adopt the computer as a possible instrument available to the composer comes from the idea that appropriate theoretical models could unravel the communication discomfort in which some composers find themselves after the experience of the historical avant-garde.
In this context, the objective of this project is to show some hypotheses to rationalize this occult arithmetic practice, that is music, to shed light on general issues which can guide the practice of music composition.
Biography
Antonio Mazzotti
Mazzotti graduated in ElectronicEng. at Polytechnic of Bari. He continued in studies at Conservatory of Bari, where he graduated cum laude in Electronic Music, under the guidance of M° F. Scagliola. He attended seminars with D.Dufour, K. Saariaho, L. Francesconi, A. Di Scipio, G. Nottoli and N. Collins. He studies and participates with Sin[x]Thésis, a group for research and production for the sound-image interaction (M° F. Scagliola). Works were represented in various events: ICMC 2007, Sound and Music Computing 2009, Fimu Festival 2012, Emufest 2011, Silence 2012, Cemat 2013, N.Y.C.E.M.F. 2013, U.V.M. 2015, F.I.L.E. 2015, I.C.M.C. 2015, MonacoElectroacoustique 2017.
Shane Byrne (*)
TenterHooks (2018) - 8'28"
Fixed medium [Stereo]
This piece is an exploration of sonic material extracted from the disembodied comb of an old music box. A large body of sound objects were generated from the source material using a generative engine written with Csound. This material was then further processed using a compositional system initially created for the purposes of live performance. Musical parameters were mapped to skeletal data gathered from a Kinect and various other sensors, which was then used to create and shape the musical gestures within this piece. After several preliminary experiments with the source material, a number of motifs began to emerge. These motifs became the scaffolding around which the entire piece was constructed.
Biography
Shane Byrne
Shane Byrne is a composer of electroacoustic music and has recently completed his PhD at Maynooth University. His work focuses on interactivity and participation within the practise of electroacoustic music composition. His current work involves investigating methods of physical computing and the potential for human-computer interaction to add to an overall immersive musical experience for both the performer and the audience. This has led him on to build interactive audio installations for various festivals and public workshops. His work has been performed all around the world at various conferences and electroacoustic festivals including TIES, MUSA, KLG and iFIMPac. He also designs and builds custom instruments with a view to expand the creative potential within inclusive musical practises.
* Call for Music, selected Composer