Here it is the list of the upcoming concerts – very much looking forward!
° 24th August 2026 – London, Cafe OTO in collaboration with The Hotel: Agnese Toniutti plays Philip Corner, music by Philip Corner Info Bookings
° 26th September 2026 – Bologna, MAMBo Museum of Modern Art Bologna in collaboration with Angelica: Fluxus Cardboards for Giuseppe Chiari, music by Giuseppe Chiari, Philip Corner, Giancarlo Cardini, Mieko Shiomi Info Bookings
° 17th October 2026 – Reggio Emilia, Festival Aperto: Open Cage, music by John Cage, Tan Dun Info Bookings
It’s always a pleasure to perform Open Cage, a recital about the caleidoscope of sounds a piano alone can produce, starting from Sonatas&Interludes for prepared piano by John Cage, of course!
It’s always valid what I wrote in the booklet of Neuma Records release: “I’ve played John Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes in concert several times. Every time I felt a sense of wonder, listening to sounds I didn’t expect, adapting the performance to a new palette of timbres. Each piano, in fact, reacts differently to the same preparation, and even using the same instrument in different concerts means partly changing the objects used inside. This is one of the mysteries of the Sonatas’ recitals: you never end up with the same set of preparation as the day before, even following Cage’s instructions as scrupulously as possible.“
So I’m very much looking forward this new discover, October 17th in Reggio Emilia for Festival Aperto.
The recital is part of a series dedicated to the multiple identities of contemporary piano, “PianIstmi”. In program also music by Cage for toy piano and “regular” piano, and a piece for inside keyboard/string piano composed by Tan Dun in honour of John Cage.
In September 26th, date of birth of the composer, I will perform in Bologna at MAMBo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna a recital dedicated to Giuseppe Chiari. MAMBo offers in fact the first complete retrospective exhibit of the work of Chiari in occasion of his centennial.
My musical contribution, Fluxus Cardboards for Giuseppe Chiari, will revolve around his long-date relationship with Fluxus group members and shared attitude. Besides Chiari’s compositions from different creative periods – before, during and after the crucial Gesti sul piano – there will be pieces by Philip Corner (inspired by Chiari), Giancarlo Cardini (friend, interpreter and creative fellow of him) and Mieko Shiomi, whose composition represents the performative and poetic side of Fluxus attitude. More soon!
It’s an honour to be the “pianist of choice” of Philip Corner (as they write in the presentation) at CafeOTO in London in August 24th. The program will be all dedicated to Philip’s music and it will hopefully give a taste of his creative versatility: from the performative pieces to the almost atonal (but very joyful) compositions of the 50s, to the homage to the beloved Couperin to again the big collections of the last decade. The most recent piece dates 2026 – of course! Everytime I meet Philip Corner there’s some new score waiting for me on the table, accompanied by the lapidary words “this is the last one”, which I soon learnt to understand as “this is the last one I wrote“, a pure chronological factual information.
So I’m very excited and also aware of the not easy task to represent the continuos source of creativity and aliveness that flows out of the composer and artist.
The show is organized by The Hotel label in collaboration with CafeOTO in anticipation of the release of Philip Corner’s ‘Passage Through: A Ritual’ LP. As prelude there will be a premiere of Miles Lukoszevieze’s new piece ‘Self-Shadowing Prey’ for live electronics and playback ensemble, inspired by the writings of Ghérasim Luca.
Thanks to the invitation of Mario Chiari, the son of the artist, and of MAMBo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, I have the worderful opportunity to immerse myself in the work of Giuseppe Chiari.
I already knew Gesti sul Piano, his most famous and experimental work on the keyboard. Watching the video artworks of his hands, dialoguing as individual characters with the piano and with each other, left me enchanted and moved at the same time. I also had the feeling that this was the poetic output of a rigorous critical reflection, though. It was correct; now I’m diving into critical essays, conceptual art statements, art books, photographic series of his performances, videos, recordings and finally, yes, scores (in standard, verbal, graphic notation) of this prolific composer, performer, artist welcomed by the Fluxus movement as well as by the conceptual art milieu.
In the occasion of his centennial (Chiari was born in Florence in 1926) several detailed books about him have been published, precious maps to navigate into his constantly-in-progress work.
This is the case with Gesti sul Piano, whose first score was written in 1962 and undergone many transformations, following the creativity of his author who became soon the performer of the piece (before him the dedicatee, Frederic Rzewski, and Giancarlo Cardini). From paper – verbal and graphic scores – to pictures and videos, from open composition to performance and improvisation, the life of this work left many different traces. Collecting them makes me feel as in a kind of treasure hunt – I’ll write more about this later.
And now it comes the funniest part: playing “with” Gesti sul piano. A playfully serious way of opening doors… what will be on the other side?
“The man is unaware that the keys exist to him / the keyboard is just a long white strip he realized however that his hands and arms can leave an imprint on the keyboard just as they would on sand he realized that his anger his anxiety his tension his rigidity his apathy his tenderness would leave for a moment a furious tender imprint on the white keys…
he has never seen anyone play the piano he cannot conceive that a single finger is meant for a single key“ Giuseppe Chiari, 1969
Playing with Giuseppe Chiari’s Gesti sul Piano
Front image: Photo from the exhibition “Party Chiari & Amicizie Fluxus” at Galleria Susanna Orlando – Pietrasanta, 2026
Some months ago – in the midst of intercontinental flights, various performances and little sleep, but much satisfaction – I won a competition for a tenure teaching position at Conservatorio Boccherini di Lucca, in Tuscany. The competition tests were mainly consisting in piano performance and orchestra first-sight score reading. In fact, I’ll be working with Orchestra Conduction and Composition students, teaching them piano performance and orchestra score reading at the piano. It’s a subject I love, because it allows to sail the vast ocean of Western music repertoire, from the Middle Age to nowadays… a never-ending discovery and recreation.
In addition, Lucca is a real jewel, a fortified city of medieval architecture with a rich past still clearly visible walking the cobbled roads. The Conservatorio carries on a prestigious tradition – Boccherini, Puccini, Giani-Luporini, and many others have walked through these doors. My room overlooks the famous Torre dei Guinigi, with its roof garden of centuries-old holm oaks (see pictures).
Very much looking forward this new beginning of the academic year, eager to test my previous experience in this new environment that will accompany me in the coming years!
A nice new review out in prestigious Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik n.2 of this year. Stefan Fricke writes about Sub Rosa release of the two volumes of the Fluxus&NeoFluxus Collection vol.1 and vol.2 :
“[…] Congratulations also to those who want to hear and read this; there is much to discover. A colorful compilation […] a collector’s edition that does not conclusively cover the subject, but rather invites further, more in-depth searching, finding, and doing it yourself. […] Let’s get started.”
It’s on line the conversation held at the Library of Congress on June 3, 2025 before the concert for Lucia Dlugoszewski’s centennial at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.It’s a 40 minutes conversation moderated by Libby Smigel, Dance curator at Library of Congress Music Division, with two of the closest collaborators of Lucia Dlugoszewski and Erick Hawkins – Katherine Duke and Louis Kavouras – plus scholar Dustin Hurt, who staged the two-day festival of Dlugoszewski’s music in Philadelphia last May, cellist Thomas Kraines from Daedalus Quartet and me. As the website of the Library describes, “topics included the reconstruction of timbre piano scores, recreations of choreography, and bringing music and dance back to life using archival materials in the Library of Congress”; in addition, lovely anecdotes from everyday life with this extraordinary couple of artists help getting closer to their work and their vision of life and art. Enjoy watching it here!
While I was in USA a copy of Cardini live – Quaderni di Octandre n.29, new publication by Agenda Produzioni in Bologna (IT), was delivered at my address. I contributed with an essay on Giancarlo Cardini’s piano pieces – the ones I performed on stage and / or recorded in Lento trascolorare (Da Vinci Classics, 2020). The titles of Cardini’s pieces are often poetic and suggestive. I quote one of them in the title of my writing: Paesaggio marino al tramonto, con barca e grande nuvola nera (the translation sounds as “Sea landscape at sunset, with boat and big dark cloud”): a glance on piano compositions by Giancarlo Cardini. In fact the deep poetic inspiration that pervades Cardini’s music can be also found in the titles of his pieces and in his writings – a good sample of this is his artist book Soap bubbles – Bolle di sapone. In the essay I try to find some recurrent aesthetic traits of Cardini’s creativity and root them in the analysis of the scores composed for his elective instrument, the piano. “Divagazioni intorno a tre canti dell’Euridice di Peri” (2013), “Paesaggio marino al tramonto con barca e nuvola nera” (1998), “Via del Fico, Firenze. Una piccola strada disadorna, silenziosa, quasi immota, arida e bella” (2011), “Tre momenti di sessualità infantile” (2007), “Terza Fantasia, ad Agnese Toniutti” (2018), “Foglie d’autunno lentamente trascolorano” (1983, rev. 2018), “Rituals for the Ryoanji Garden” (2012) and “Una notte d’inverno” are all mentioned and scrutinized. The list of contributors to Cardini live, curated by musicologist Renzo Cresti, includes musicians, scholars and writers that worked and studied with Giancarlo Cardini; I am looking forward to read each essay, a way of celebrating him through words, music and heartfelt memories.
Nice review coming after A.A.Clementi, the concert with Anna Clementi in Udine for Salotto Musicale Fvg on May, 29. Paolo Carradori for Le Salon Musical succeeded in the not easy task of depicting in words the explosive energy of the singer. Indeed it was fun both to play together pieces for voice and piano by Aldo Clementi, Erik Satie, John Cage, Mieko Shiomi and listen to her solo sparkling performances of pieces by Cage, Morton Feldman, Emanuele Casale, Dieter Schnebel, Yoko Ono. You can find the full review here (in italian). Below some extracts translated in English and some nice pics here.
“Also of considerable interest are the two short works stimulated by the Joycian masterpiece Finnegan’s Wake. Toniutti flanks Clementi and on the closed piano used as an almost ancestral percussion she emphasizes, distributes interpunitions, accents behind the voice that, like a sound wave, flows legibly, detachedly, dreamily. […] Clementi […] gives us a pleasant and sparkling Je te veux on a text by the poet Henry Pacory. She is flanked by the piano with effective and engaging touch. In a few minutes we recall the singularity, the originality of the French composer. […] The evening closes with two Japanese composers Mieko Shiomi and Yoko Ono. Their works hark back to the art movement born in the 1960s and called Fluxus. Experimentalism, interdisciplinarity, improvisation, happenings, and performance aspects are its founding features. In an open vision where art is lived as a collective life experience against all conventions, the works presented by Clementi through actions, gestures, vocality, transport us to those years full of expectations and research. ” Paolo Carradori – Le Salon Musical
