Program

Giacinto Scelsi, L'Âme Ailée / L'Âme Ouverte - for solo violin (1973)
Christopher Trapani, Tesseræ - for viola d’amore and live electronics (2017), world premiere
Pierluigi Billone, Equilibrio. Cerchio - for solo violin (2014), Italian premiere

Marco Fusi, violin

Tesseræ (2017) by Christopher Trapani is a work for viola d’amore and electronics that draws inspiration from the lyra and kemençe music of Crete and Istanbul. Grounded in a modal tradition, small fragments of microtonal scales are used to assemble long expressive lines with a nearly vocal quality. Alongsisde the live instrument, the electronics provide virtual resonances (mimicking the viola d’amore’s sympathetic strings) and canonic echoes that transform the sounds into a multifaceted acoustic space.

Tesseræ has benefitted from a rare close collaboration between performer and composer, studying the minutiae of ornamentation and the gestures of traditional players, as well as the use of sympathetic strings. This collaborative process was made possible by the Fellows Project Fund of the American Academy in Rome, where Trapani is currently in residence as winner of the 2016–17 Luciano Berio Rome Prize in musical composition. The Italian Academy at Columbia University in New York will present the US premiere of this piece on April 26, 2017.

Equilibrio. Cerchio, which receives is first Italian performance in this program, is a work for solo violin by Pierluigi Billone, composed in 2014. The rituality embedded in the score loosely connects with the choral singing of the traditional Tibetan music; the violin takes charge as well of the percussive punctuation of the vocal strophes, echoing the traditional cymbals and drums often used in those rituals.

The diptych L’Âme Ailée / L’Âme Ouverte (1973) is one of the most icastic works by Giacinto Scelsi, where the composer explores the sound “inside of the note,” navigating through micro intervals and beating in order to connect the listeners with the true essence of sound, as if it were perceived one step before it becomes music.

“Le note, le note non sono che dei rivestimenti, degli abiti […]. Bisogna arrivare al cuore del suono: solo aloora si è musicisti, altrimenti si è solo artigiani.”