Tempo Reale Festival 2022, ARIA
ARIA is not just the title of an enigmatic John Cage composition. Instead, it most of all wishes to be a symbolic gesture that alludes to a feeling of reopening to the making of live music. We will first of all accomplish this by constructing an open-air programme in a little-known part of the park of Villa Strozzi, the Piazzale del Torrino, with the collaboration of a core team of “extreme” Italian and international musicians, who have all responded enthusiastically to our tireless desire to offer exploratory music. The events will also take place in other locations suitable to host internationally known projects and artists in the fields of contemporary writing and of sound and vision. Once again, we will therefore enjoy a multifaceted and open approach, packed with different instruments and languages, united by the spirit of exploration that has always been the distinctive mark of our activity.
Programme:
Vittorio Montalti & Blow Up Percussion | The Smell of Blue Electricity
19 May, 21.00 hrs
Galleria Frittelli Arte Contemporanea, Via Val di Marina 15, Florence
“The project originates from a reflection on the role of electronics and of their performer. We plan to offer a composition that doesn’t just see the instrumental ensemble on stage, but also the composer performing the electronic part, and to focus on a show that breaks with the habits of the usual performance in order to create a closer contact with the public.” (Vittorio Montalti)
The smell of blue electricity, for percussion quartet, live electronics, and lights
Vittorio Montalti, composition and live electronics
Blow Up Percussion, percussion instruments
Tempo Reale – Damiano Meacci, sound direction
Work commissioned with support from SIAE – CLASSICI DI OGGI 2018-2019
SUONO GIARDINO / PRATOLINO
21 May, 16.30 hrsParco Mediceo di Pratolino, Via Fiorentina 276, Pratolino
The event SUONO GIARDINO, the cycle of guided soundwalks that make citizens aware of environmental sound, is now focused on Parco Mediceo di Pratolino in the Vaglia Municipality.
Derived from research done in Canada in the 1960s and 1970s, the soundwalk experience is significant and useful for the reappropriation of urban locations for public and aggregative use, focusing on the value of sound and on listening education.
The walks are guided by an expert figure, capable of increasing the audience’s awareness on themes such as the sound landscape, acoustic environmentalism, the sustainable city, and quality of life, involving the public in a participatory process that is open to all, and that can be implemented without the need of a musical background. The appointment lasts about an hour, and comfortable clothing is recommended. In case of inclement weather, the event will be postponed to a later date.
Led by Simone Faraci
Participation is free, no booking is required.
Robert Cahen à Florence | audiovisions
27 May, 19.00 hrs
Cinema Stensen, Viale Don Giovanni Minzoni 25c, Florence
“Robert Cahen. From France, is one of the pioneers of international video art and one of its protagonists. A trained musician, from 1971 to now he has created an imposing body of works – in film, video, and installations – in which sound research, contemporary arts, photography, cinema, and dance all intertwine. Cahen has paved the way to new manners of representation of landscape, urban space, entertainment, and travel. He has created poetic, pictorial, and musical metamorphoses by reinventing the documentary and narration” (Sandra Lischi). For the first time in Florence, Cahen will participate in a talk with Sandra Lischi, his biographer, and will present some of the most significant audiovisual masterpieces of his career.
Introduction by Sandra Lischi in dialogue with Robert Cahen
Project of Karine (1976), Juste le temps (1983), Hong Kong Song (1989)
Francesco Massaro/Maniera Nera | Liminale
Alvin Curran and Walter Prati | Community Garden
14 June, 21.00 hrs
Piazzale del Torrino – Parco di Villa Strozzi, Via Pisana 77, Florence
Francesco Massaro/Maniera Nera | Liminale
Francesco Massaro, baritone sax, electronics
In Liminale, which originates from some of Francesco Aprile’s writings on Taranto and the large steel industry that encompasses it, Massaro explores the concept of liminality through improvisational/compositional practices, the use of field recordings, and synthetic sounds that imitate behaviours and structures in a makeshift Sound Theatre that escapes all categories and genres. This is how he weaves a dialogue between natural and artificial, acoustic and electronic, real time and deferred time, trying to unhinge logical, temporal, and narrative consequentialities by surrendering to ambiguity, to the provisional, to the liminal.
Alvin Curran and Walter Prati | Community Garden
Alvin Curran, keyboard, sampler, piano
Walter Prati, electric cello, electronics
Production: MMT Creative Lab
Community Garden collects Curran and Prati’s experiences from the last two years of their activity; these years have contained most of the urban pandemic isolation and its psychological and social repercussions. Just like a shared urban garden requires the collaboration of those who visit it, the music presented here picks up on this collaboration between different personalities, stories, and generations. Different types of electronics and different instruments exchange their views, creating a landscape that is partly unusual for both. The Community Garden project has been published on CD by DaVinci Classic in 2021.
An event within Secret Florence, a strategic project of ’Estate Fiorentina 2022
Cadaver Mike (Costanzo & Eks)
David Moss & Tempo Reale | Many More Voices
15 June, 21.00 hrs
Piazzale del Torrino – Parco di Villa Strozzi, Via Pisana 77, Florence
Cadaver Mike
Stefano Costanzo, drumset and objects
Eks, samples, tapes, and feedback
A Non-Jazz/Noise duo based in Naples, formed by Beatmaker Eks and drummer Stefano Costanzo “Tricatiempo”: radical improvisation, noise, and deconstructed breakcore with a dub attitude all converge in a lysergic, claustrophobic, and colourless experience.
David Moss & Tempo Reale | Many More Voices
David Moss, voice
Francesco Canavese, live electronics
Francesco Giomi, sound and live electronics
One of the greatest representatives of worldwide vocal research returns to Florence after many years, thanks to the resumption of an electroacoustic improvisation project that has travelled across the best Italian stages: a sound theatre performance with the interaction between David Moss and the unrestricted electroacoustic universe of Tempo Reale, going from references to consumer music to the deepest sound experimentation. All this within an avant-garde technological framework that makes use of new live sound transformation techniques along with unusual managing processes for the relationship between structure and improvisation.
David Moss is considered one of the most innovative singers and percussionists in contemporary music. He has performed his solo works all over the world and there are countless works commissioned to him by prestigious ensembles and dedicated to him by equally important composers. His ability to range across every musical genre is endless and completely original, while never abandoning his “academic” ancestry but also never disowning his availability to the most innovative and unrestrained worlds of rock, hip-hop, and jazz.
An event within Secret Florence, a strategic project of ’Estate Fiorentina 2022
Tickets 8€
Reduced tickets, ARCI, Carta dello Studente 5€
In case of rain, the events in Piazzale del Torrino will be held at Limonaia di Villa Strozzi.
Partners: Regione Toscana, Città Metropolitana di Firenze, Comune di Firenze, Estate Fiorentina, Ministero della Cultura, Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio Firenze, Publiacqua, Quartiere 4, Fondazione Stensen, Frittelli Arte Contemporanea, Limonaia di Villa Strozzi, Arci Firenze, musicaelettronica.it, USMARADIO
