Musica nostra Medicina.

Satellites and Knowledge

AngelicA is eighteen years old. They have been eighteen years of musical revolution, I would say, driven by the effort to combine pleasure with research by opening the festival up to all musical forms, especially the emergent ones, and their representation in the most diverse contexts, with the aim of getting them across to/making them meet an ever-expanding audience.
The creature has come of age, and it seems now appropriate, or perhaps necessary, to let it go. However, there is still much uncertainty about the musical and cultural choices that will be made for Bologna in the future.
The need for (and the potentialities of) an institutional space, a stable theatre for music, a safe laboratory for musicians, has been expressed numerous times. I have, for a few years, been considering this to be more important than a festival, especially if the overall conditions of work are taken into account. This is in fact a tangible requirement in order to create an environment where music and musicians can live and thrive on the opportunities a city can offer. In a city like Bologna, appointed City of Music by UNESCO, more consideration should be given to the problematic situation of music, and to what musicians do, or shall we say, try to do, in spite of not being sufficiently encouraged and supported. In fact, they are forced to either adjust to the musical context of clubs and bars – which can be good for practising but do not stimulate creativity and artistic growth – or to join an orchestra that plays yesterday’s music. At the margins, or the frontiers, creativity is brought about by heroes. However, in spite of the isolation (which sometimes can be necessary) such spaces cannot provide what the musicians deserve.
Bologna has one of the largest and fiercest (i.e., vital) communities of musicians in Italy: this most certainly is because something happens there, which does not happen elsewhere. Yet it is for this very reason that the city’s institutions must work harder to find suitable solutions. If Rome has a House of Jazz, Bologna can afford to have a House for today’s music: research music, avant-garde music, art music.
How I managed to put together this programme, I do not know for sure. There was much movement, ideas constantly coming up and changing because of the complications that would arise, and unexpected help. The difficulties I found in doing this job, which was held until a year ago by Mario Zanzani (June 30, 1948 > May 13, 2007 – Director of AngelicA, to whom this programme is dedicated), together with my usual duties, have really put AngelicA and myself to the test during this important transition. New collaborators joined the venture and helped to unfasten the knots, and Sandra Murer (another pillar of AngelicA) took upon herself new responsibilities.
It is a thoughtful, mobile and meditative programme, one that must be savoured. It does not have any spectacular outbursts: every day a new world, a new research is presented; historic musicians and emergent ones perform original projects together; an invisible thread links these worlds, united by a musical and spiritual research.
Three events in co-production with the Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, which opens its doors to art music: for a few days its spaces will be transformed to host a series of exclusive, internationally renowned, concerts, which seldom take place even abroad.
AngelicA paints a different picture of today’s music and the currents that run through it, and of what it has to offer.
We will try to create the right listening dimension.
SUSTANZA DI COSE SPERATA comes from far, it is a title that arouses inspiration and offers visions. It brings together two individuals who represent different researches: Alessandra Celletti lives a delicate and impressionist pianism, with shadows and lights of the classics brought back to life through her readings, which add almost miraculous original elements. These are her forms: they speak melodically, and do not aim at being more than what can be heard. Hans-Joachim Roedelius has a long and variegated electronic experience; he went through difficult times, which inspired important documents and records that are still much talked about. These days, he produces risks: the risk of a sound that, in order to speak, tends to adjust itself to the world, when it should invite the world to follow it. Alessandra Celletti and Hans-Joachim Roedelius’s project deserves support, as it is being presented to the public for the first time: the opportunity for such different musicians to meet and exchange music and ideas, with a view to create new forms, should be a usual occurrence. Very few events allow room for musical projects that are not yet in their accomplished form, which are being born, or that we can barely fathom. But even if we were to discover that their musical value is relative, the human and poetic aspect of the story that is presented is full of possibilities that a festival should always pursue.
The Magic ID explores the song-composition: we enter the modern. They speak to today without knowing what tomorrow will be like. All the members of this unusual quartet offer their suggestion in order to find the key that opens a form that plays with limits. These are the limits that allow music to sing a different song.
Phill Niblock e Thomas Ankersmit: as solos and as a duo. They propose an idea of sound that is searched for and explored until it merges into a more accomplished entity. Phill Niblock is a representative of a movement (Minimalism) whose named cannot be mentioned, because it has been worn out by time. Or perhaps we can call it essentialist; but first and foremost, he is and has always been an important and determined sound seeker. Thomas Ankersmit is part of the new international electronic (and acoustic) scene. Together, they represent two generations of musicians that, confronting each other, generate. Their performance is a variation on the theme of AngelicA’s programme: images go on stage, and together with sound produce an artisanal and artificial dimension that is the result of a long process of research.
Charles Curtis performs the Italian première of compositions by La Monte Young with a light projection/installation by Marian Zazeela. It is a very exclusive project, presented before only in Berlin, Paris and New York. Charles has worked with La Monte Young for several years, in order to learn the composition with the method, favoured by La Monte, of the oral transmission between guru and disciple. In fact, he is the only musician allowed to perform this composition. Just Charles & Cello in The Romantic Chord was written for him. Marian Zazeela’s light projection reflects the music, and harmonizes perfectly with it, taking it even further: no longer just a concert, or just an installation, it is a marriage of visions that sends into orbit. Like other projects by La Monte Young (who already took part in AngelicA with The Forever Bad Blues Band) it puts the listener to a listening test: time becomes dilated, the senses open up. We are in the presence of a truly historic music for cello, with hints to Debussy and other tangible quotations that, like ghosts from another time, come forth and immediately disappear in a long alap (from Indian raga). Much would need to be said about the concept of time, about perception, and about the experience of participating in this kind of concert. Unquestionably, there is the experience of a time that is different from what we are used to: it is a jump in time.
Charlemagne Palestine & Perlonex is also an encounter of different generations: the father influences the children, the children make their father sing. Charlemagne represents that part of the music scene that, in spite of external pressures, stubbornly rejects homologation to anyone but the producer himself: once he finds a sign (or his own sign), he dwells on it: all possible variations will have to be explored, while everything else is superfluous, a mere distraction. Perlonex fits well into this context, learns more about time and is allowed to move freely, pushing Charlemagne slightly out of his own context.
MESSIAEN AT AUTOUR DE MESSIAEN is a classic which is not heard often: Nadia Ratsimandresy and Matteo Ramon Arevalos present the whole repertoire authorized by Olivier Messiaen for Ondes Martenot and piano, including compositions written for other instruments. A precious sound that turns from classical into contemporary, as it evokes various musical currents and then turns back into a classic. The Ondes Martenot is defined as “an electronic instrument which makes you forget its electronic nature”. The performers make their instruments sing. Compositions by Messiaen’s students from the Paris Conservatory are also included in the programme.
Andrea Ruggeri, a last-minute addition to the programme, produced a movie with Mario Zanzani as actor and sound designer: SOLVITE ME is a journey, a declaration, which we decided to present to the public. It shows rarefied and meaningful images, between Bologna and the desert. Mario told me at length about his experience in the desert, which he described, to use his words, as “magnificent”. Silence comes back, a good friend is evoked and the emotions removed.
Uday Bhawalkar, a disciple of Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar and Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar, ends the 13th of May of AngelicA with his performance of the RAGA YAMAN, which is considered one of the most important ragas of Hindustani music; its magic aura remains a mystery even for its most acclaimed interpreters. Uday’s ethereal singing reminds us how important and advanced tradition can be, how valuable it is if experienced and interpreted with devotion. In the alap, which offers a space for prayer and for harmonising with the breath of the sky, rhythm and time break through to bring us back to earth, in a return that is more precious because of the new route taken to get there.
Pierre Henry (born in 1927) appears for the first time in Italy, as sound director of two performances that sketch out his career: alternating between recent ad historical compositions he outlines the situation of musique concrète. The Homme Seul will turn the grand hall of the Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna into an installation of speakers and lights that will project his music in a unique event especially developed for that context and for AngelicA. Pierre Henry, like all those who have chosen to follow an extremely personal path, is a controversial figure in the music world. He sends the world of laptops into orbit.
Butch Morris (whose performance has been cancelled – possibly postponed to unknown date) with FOLDING SPACE presents a new project of difficult realization both in Italy and abroad, after the extremely popular success of MONDO CANE by Mike Patton. The latter obtained the praise of generations that could not have been further from each other in terms of their tastes and history in the towns of Lugo, Modena and Salsomaggiore (its theme was the Italian song of the ‘50s and ‘60s, revisited with a pop-experimental aesthetics). In this instance, the whole operation is undertaken anew, but with a completely different project: with the Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini, a few guests selected from New York’s creative scene, and an outstanding solo singer, Shelley Hirsch. It is an original piece of work, new even to the musicians who take part in it, which aims at showing what can be achieved if a creative agreement is reached between extremely different realities in order to create together a music that, instead of being the derivate of something that already exists, can reach new objectives. This is a goal that conforms to the idea of a musician who wishes to venture into uncharted territory. Tradition is made to meet improvisation, in order to establish a delicate balance between the different languages of our time, as if the synthesis one is looking for was not to be found in those “currents of expression”, but indeed within each one of us. These are hyper-romantic songs and music, rendered deeply moving and dramaturgical by the interpretation of Shelley Hirsch, who proves to be one of the most important avant-garde singers.

Franco Fabbri presents the encounters & listenings. He meets the musicians for us, the listeners: a homely dimension, in-depth conversations with the authors, premières of new materials.

In the summer of 2007 in Bologna’s Piazza Maggiore, the Cineteca di Bologna organized an evening in concert in memory of Mario Zanzani. Gian Luca Farinelli, the director of the Cineteca, invited me to write a few thoughts for that occasion, and I would like those thoughts to appear also here, in this Quaderno d’AngelicA:

Mario, I wanted to tell you that you are the right person for achieving impossible goals. We could express an idea, a feeling of need, and you, with your welcoming attitude that gives hope, would only say a few words: “Maybe we can do something about it”.
Those words are so important for someone who is about to face the world, who is trying to find their way: they are a nourishment. And that hope is gold, it is motivation.
Many doors were closed and you helped us to open them. We found the strength to act even when we thought there was no room for an idea that you, instead, believed authentic, perhaps naïve, but young and necessary. It didn’t even matter if you could not fully understand that idea: you understood the need, the feeling behind it.
In words, we agreed very rarely perhaps, but in deeds we were profoundly connected and resolute.
It is in diversity that one finds change.
Around us we can still see problems, and the same things that used to make us smile or be upset, but never give up.
It seems that the events and the coincidences decide for us: they take something away, they give you something else.
I almost don’t get angry anymore, I do not expect to be understood, even though yesterday…
I search inside what I cannot find outside and I realize that what has to happen, happens.
At every moment, underneath the way we relate to each other, something flows between individuals, through the silence between the words, in their eyes. This something changes us, shapes us, and often we are unaware of it. Those disagreements that appear as stumbling blocks are indeed an opportunity of growth that we are given. It comes a time when everything dissolves, even those blocks, and it is easier to see and to take each other’s hands.
Sometimes, something resounds in you, that makes you realize how blind you have been to aspects of your life that you have not yet fully elaborated and faced.
Everything reflects upon those that surround you and are close to you.

Music our Medicine.

Read the feeling.

May we open the words.