Ready to fly to Prague next week at Žižkov Atrium for LUXURY OF MIND = FLUXUS.
On the 28th November at 19.30
Anna Clementi (Germany, voice), Deborah Walker (Italy, cello), Luciano Chessa (Italy, Dan Bau, violin, organ), Werner Durand (Germany, wind instruments), Miroslav Beinhauer (Czechia, piano), Petr Bakla (Czechia, piano), Petr Ferenc (Czechia, spoken word) and me
will be ready to perform a quite unusual happening/concert with music by
John Cage, Milan Knizák, Henning Christiansen, Philip Corner, George Maciunas, Geoffrey Hendricks, Yoko Ono, Giuseppe Chiari, Terry Riley, Eric Andersen, Dieter Schnebel, Bengt af Klintberg, Mieko Shiomi, Ovvind Fahlström, Sten Hanson, Nam June Paik, La Monte Young.
I bet it will be fun!
All started from an idea by Petr Studený and Opening Performance Orchestra in Prague, that led to the release of Stolen Symphony, the first volume of Fluxus&NeoFluxus collection, and now, brand new, to the second and final part, Keep together (Sub Rosa label, 2024). As the previous one, it’s a limited edition (400 copies) of double LP or double CD, with a very rich booklet with many texts and essays about Fluxus. But differently from the first, which is sold out, there are still copies available! I played a La Monte Young-inspired piece, and re-released music by Philip Corner and Giancarlo Cardini (also in Neuma Records and Da Vinci Classics). Very happy to be part of this second edition with all the musicians I will soon meet in Prague and many others.
Some photos of the evening – almost three hours of music and performance! – and the rehearsals. Thanks to Petr Studený for the pics.
In a few weeks I’ll be in Berlin again with two concerts, on the 6th of August and on the 20th of August. The first recital, Open Cage, will be dedicated to John Cage‘s music for toy piano, prepared piano, string piano and “regular” piano. The second program, Fluxus Cardboards, will feature music by Fluxus artists and composers Corner, Shiomi, La Monte Young, Higgins, and Cardini. Both recitals are included in a concert series parallel to the exhibition “Holy Fluxus”, held from July 13th to September 8th at St. Matthews Church in Berlin. The exhibit is organized by Archivio Conz and presents to the public part of the wide collection of Francesco Conz, now available in Berlin thanks to a huge cataloguing work. Quoting from Archivio Conz press review, “Francesco Conz (1935–2010) was an obsessive Italian collector, patron, curator, friend of artists, and “producer as artist sui generis” (Thomas Marquard). In 1972, after meeting Hermann Nitsch, Günter Brus, and Joe Jones in Berlin, his interests focused on Lettrism, Concrete Poetry, Viennese Actionism, Fluxus, music, and literature. Over the course of many decades, he created a unique worldwide network of artists. His tireless activities as a publisher of over 560 art editions (Edizioni Conz) in the northern Italian city of Asolo, and later in Verona, contributed significantly to the development of Fluxus in Italy and worldwide. Since 2016, the Archivio Conz, with its approximately 5,000 objects by more than 200 artists, has been housed in Berlin and is now being presented to the public in its entirety for the first time after eight years of cataloging and digitization.”
I am very pleased to be part of the event together with many friends and musicians; in fact, the exhibit will host a free concert every Tuesday, and you can check the full programme here. Below some information about the two recitals (and some images later, as usual).
Open Cage, on August 6th, is a listening journey around the sound of the piano. It includes music by John Cage for toy, prepared and regular piano, hosting a piece for “string piano” composed by Tan Dun in honour of John Cage. The young Chinese composer found a supporter in Cage, who spoke very positively of him during the interviews and conversations of the last years. It’s a music programme I’ve played many times, always with a lot of pleasure, looking forward to the surprise of the new sounds of preparation of Sonatas&Interludes (you never know, when preparing a piano, what will come out at the end). A little treat: this time I will play a toy piano from Conz collection, signed by Fluxus artist Larry Miller.
Fluxus Cardboards, on August 20th, includes plenty of Fluxus music and of course plenty of handmade musical cardboards. It’s not the first time that I spend some hours with scissors, glue, paper and cutter, as far as it seems that these fragments of score, once thrown into the air after being played, are irresistible souvenirs for the audience… Composer Mieko Shiomi wrote to me very pleased at the idea that some of her music is now in different homes around the world, so I keep cutting and pasting in good spirits. Beside Mieko Shiomi’s, the programme will feature music by Philip Corner, Giancarlo Cardini, Dick Higgins and inspired by La Monte Young. Cardboards, mallets, brushes, balls and other sonorous objects will be in my baggage – stimulating inquires at airport security check as usual. A stair will host as a special guest Anna Clementi, who kindly agreed to lend her beautiful voice for the opening piece.
↓Photos by @giuliabaresi – Courtesy of Archivio Conz, Berlin. Open Cage, 6th August
↓Photos by Giorgia Palmisano – Courtesy of Archivio Conz, Berlin. Fluxus Cardboards, 20th August
After last October concert for Festival Aperto in Reggio Emilia, here we go with an other show with Philip Corner’s piano music. On Saturday, June 1st, at Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Casa Cavazzini in Udine at 6.30 pm we will play together a choice from his 70 years repertoire for solo piano and piano four-hands. As a precious counterpoint, some original music papers by Corner from Caterina Gualco / Unimedia Modern collection, curated by Cristina Burelli. The concert is organized by Civici Musei Udine, in collaboration with Salotto Musicale Fvg. Needless to say I’m very happy and looking forward to the privilege of sharing again the stage (and the piano) with Philip!
This year Philip Corner celebrates his first 90 years! Festival Aperto in Reggio Emilia dedicates an event to his 70-years composing career, a very special concert where I will have the honour and pleasure to play his piano works with him.
Very much looking forward to next October 4th, 20.30, at the beautiful Sala degli Specchi in Teatro Valli, Reggio Emilia (tickets, program and info here).
Below some pics by @Andrea Mazzoni and a poetic review by writer and journalist Ivanna Rossi, author of “Gli sConcerti di Philip Corner-The disConcerts of Philip Corner” (Italian / English)
pics by @Andrea Mazzoni for Festival Aperto
Gazzetta di Reggio, Oct 4th 2023 (click to zoom)
Ivanna Rossi, Philip sconcerto di Philip Corner e Agnese Toniutti alla Sala degli Specchi, 4 ottobre 2023. (scroll down for English translation by Philip Corner)
Gli specchi sono pieni di gente che si specchia su altra gente che si specchia su altra gente. Philip e Agnese sono quattro otto sedici trentadue musicisti… Entrano e si profondono in un inchino davanti al monolito nero lucente che racchiude il Sacro Nulla carico di infinito silenzio rumore pensiero. I musicisti hanno abiti bianchi e neri come tasti di questo mondo. L’inchino riconosce il Potere, il pubblico riconosce l’inchino. Il concerto può finire qui: cominciando. Gli applausi si rispecchiano all’infinito.
Fare musica è ascoltare il suono goccia a goccia. Cogliere una nota con un dito, seguirne la coda nell’aria. Ogni nota manda una scia di borotalco luminoso. Un bouquet di note, poche. Il dito resta teso nel riverbero sonoro, si abbassa in silenzio, dubbioso di aver preteso troppo, o poco e niente.
Agnese graziosamente rovista tra le note, cerca qualcosa che punga. Rovista con delicatezza, prova, scarta, tralascia. Le note cadono con code vibranti, con strascichi setosi e cangianti. Ecco ha trovato: una nota interrogativa, un punto interrogativo sottile e appuntito, di cristallo. E’ una nota in why. La prova: sì, va bene è una nota impavida, capace di fronteggiare il Tabernacolo d’ogni spavento. Osa: why? La Forza risponde dall’Alto con voce bassa continua pervasiva. Pensi: adesso calpesta il why importuno, lo fa tacere. No, non succede, il why allora saltella importuno inopportuno e cristallino, reca disturbo al motore immobile che lo sovrasta con un suono che non tramonta e non muta. Why? Risponde il suono pastoso di un respiro grave, di un pensiero assorto che fa risalire il sangue rombando fino alla testa. Why? saltella la domanda cristallina. Il sacro rombo illumina di tuoni e lampi la cupola del cielo, lo spazio dentro fuori e oltre, e lei, armata della sua indefettibile nota di cristallo, ancora: why? Lui manda lo stesso identico rombo cavernoso, sempre uguale e diverso, definisce infinitamente paziente lo spazio eterno, oscuro, e lei lo punge: why? Lui soffia lo stesso identico suono rovente e onnipotente, e lei: why? e ancora: why? Lui romba con spaventosa fermezza che non ammette repliche e non si cura di dare spiegazioni, è così e basta. Lei insiste, insiste e pungola: why? why? Da un momento all’altro il rombo schiaccerà il punto di domanda come un insetto. Lo spiaccicherà al suolo, lo zittirà per sempre. Invece Whhhrom e Whhhrom e Whhhrom, why e why e why, una interrogazione, una non risposta, una danza all’Infinito. Cade il Silenzio. Chi si è arreso per primo? Non lei, non Lui.
In scena c’è un piccolo piano toys fuori luogo, ridente, pronipote della maestà del meraviglioso Steinway. Dove solleticarlo? Dove picchiettarlo? come fargli dire quel che sa? Philip lo saggia con la sua bacchetta: sì, toccato di sopra il pianotoys dà un suono sordo; se lo batti sui tasti fa uno stridìo; se l’accarezzi sul fianco è capace solo di un banale fruscio. Se la bacchetta capita in un angolo della tastiera, ecco che spingendo e frullando si produce un trillo gioioso: ah! si trova lì il bandolo della musica! Sta lì, invisibile, raggomitolata stretta. Come in Spoon River, qui detto Crostolo, Philip fu sorpreso dai suoi novant’anni ma con la vita avrebbe ancora giocato…
Agnese si siede a suonare scalpitando, con scatti del corpo, delle gambe e delle dita: appare un centauro musicale, un Monstrum con cinque gambe e una coda. Non sa ancora cosa dire. Quando si siede Philip, manda guai: “Guai a voi!” L’avvertimento fende a zig zag un bosco di note in salita. Il suono cade rotto, gelato, tagliato improvvisamente in modo netto. Affettato. Insiste, sbuccia il suono con un colpo preciso; lascia nel bosco una segatura sonora. Saltella nell’aria, è già un altro giorno. Creature selvatiche veloci passano veloci tra sgranature di suoni con inclinazioni diverse. Dall’alto cade l’eco luminosa di un suono non finito. Infinito.
Una danza a volo radente attraversa piano piano la sala, sotto voce, al battito di una formazione di oche, tranquille. La musica green è un omaggio alla dolce Phoebe dai capelli verdi, che sa sempre dove andare. Le oche sposate bianche se ne vanno lente a due a due dalla sala, obbediscono all’invito di andarsene senza voltarsi, che ormai basta, cos’altro c’è da dire e non dire?
Gli applausi si rispecchiano tutt’intorno affettuosamente, ancora da prima.
Ivanna Rossi
(E Philip aggiunge) Why? chiedi tu. La risposta si trova negli mille anni di commentari talmudichi…..; Why not?
This month a couple of news related in some way to the hot topic of the moment, Artificial Intelligence and its connection to the most human of human characteristics, art making.
Finally out the trailer of the multimedia installation The moon is full, but it is not the moon, which took place in Luxembourg last summer. Together with artists Gioj De Marco, Karolina Pernar and Andrej Mircev, we dreamt our dreams and fed an AI, interacting through and with it to build a collective dreamworld. This was the base for our artistic output that took the form of an immersive multimedia installation. Here you can have a taste of it:
This experience is still working in my mind; what AI means and can mean for our present and future… (no easy pronouncements on such a complex topic).
The invitation to this edition of the festival Udin&Jazz, titled “Jazz against the machine”, was an other tile of the mosaic. Having been asked to lead a concert for kids and families about contemporary/experimental music, I started reflecting upon the meaning of education, let’s say about the ingredients of such a fundamental task in human society that is growing the next generation – a task we are delegating more and more to entities not always emotionally connected to our children. I quote from the presentation:
Piano Maestro – How important is the role of the teacher in transmitting knowledge, in a humane society? In times that constantly mention so-called artificial intelligence, it is good to weigh the value of “showing how it is done, by doing.” A gesture that combines in-formation, care, passion, pleasure, meaning. The masters of this concert do not go slow, in truth, [“piano” in Italian means also “slow”, ed.] but they take great leaps and transform the piano into an instrument that is not yet there. Their students will go even further, making their own that look between the curious and the amazed that allows them to imagine, and realize, the world of their own desires.
The music of Henry Cowell, John Cage, Philip Corner, Tan Dun, seemed to me a recognizable path of an attitude towards art and life that constitutes the real heritage from teacher to pupil. György Kurtág’s Játékok is a lovely example of the reverse process: the blessing of learning at every age from every cue that life brings to us (and every teacher knows how much he learns from his students!). Leopold and Wolfgang Amadeus made a brief, courteous apparition among all this ordeal of strange sounds. Looks like the kids enjoyed the performance, and the adults too. Thanks to Francesca Tini Brunozzi and Angelo Salvin for the pics below.
A couple of very nice reviews came from Germany this month: one on Glissando magazine about MaerzMusik performance in Berlin in March, the other published on the historical Schott music magazine Neue Zeitschrift fuer Musik (founded by Robert Schumann, it dates 1834).
Monika Zykla wrote an extensive review about all the events of MaerzMusik festival 2023 for magazine Glissando. That’s how she refers to Subtle Matters recital: “In the first part of the three-hour-long evening program titled Subtle Matters the Italian pianist and researcher, Agnese Toniutti, delivered a stunning solo piano recital that explored the sonic possibilities of the instrument „beyond its body” as described in the program. One of the highlights was Toniutti’s enthralling performance of Lucia Dlugoszewski’s four-part solo “timbre piano”4 composition, Exacerbated Subtlety Concert (Why Does a Woman Love a Man?) (1997/2000). This piece was juxtaposed with Tan Dun’s C-A-G-E, fingering for piano (1994), an homage to John Cage, and a selection of compositions for real and toy piano by the American composer Philip Corner. As in her solo album released in 2021 under the same title, Toniutti showed exceptional sensitivity and insight in her selection of the pieces. As a result, a fascinating dialogue emerged between Dlugoszewski and Dun’s compositions that further contextualized and situated Dlugoszewski’s music and aesthetics as part of the New York scene. It subtly referenced Dlugoszewski’s ambiguous and changing attitude towards John Cage as its most prominent and central figure which I read as a hint towards the question of why Cage’s silences were louder than the silences of others. Toniutti undertook an extensive body of research so that subtleties like this could surface and be signaled through music. Not to mention the amount of work she put into performing Dlugoszewski’s piece in the first place, despite the score being unavailable, as Toniutti explained in the program note.” You can read the complete article here.
Jakob Böttcher reviewed Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano by John Cage, released this spring on Neuma Records, on Neue Zeitschrift fuer Musik issue 2/2023. Here is the English translation, and below the screenshot of the original review in German. “Screws and erasers – in view of the unbelievably rich sound palette that unfolds, it is hard to believe that these are the only objects that John Cage opposes to the sublime piano as preparation objects. Even Cage himself noted that the sound result of the preparations can vary greatly depending on the instrument. With her version of the opus magnum for prepared piano, composed in 1946-48, the Italian pianist Agnese Toniutti has succeeded in creating an incredibly high-resolution and subtle recording, both in terms of interpretation and sound. Cage certainly did not call the one-movement miniatures, most of which are barely three minutes long, Sonatas and Interludes without a hint of irony. The symmetrically nested 16 sonatas and four interludes follow in their arrangement and form a stringency that continues in the musical text in the form of idiosyncratically angular rhythms and patterns. Toniutti understands how to implement the often mechanical character of the pieces with emphasis (she herself writes in the booklet that she understands it as her role to implement especially the tone durations as precisely as possible) and yet to recognize and emphasize the humanity, even a cantabile gesture, that they contain. Her fine pianistic agogic delivers an authentic and at the same time organical result. A similar dualism is found on the tonal level. The musical text and the preparation go hand in hand. The preparation evokes the machine-like character, in which the piano mutates into a real sound apparatus through the screws and erasers. On many recordings, the piano is almost unrecognizable behind these drum-like, often wooden sounds. Agnese Toniutti’s preparation takes a different approach and refreshingly does not hide the sound generator; with many notes the piano tones are clearly recognizable. Paradoxical – and ingenious – is the fact that the preparation sounds are not drowned out by this, but can even be experienced all the more intensely. Thus, Toniutti’s piano is uniquely balanced in reproducing the preparations in an exceptionally wide range of colors (the screws are obviously carefully selected and placed) and at the same time combining them with the familiar tones of the concert grand. The keys are always softly struck, even in the most machine-like conditions, despite the considerable dynamic reduction due to the preparation, which – as Toniutti notes in the booklet – often tempts one to play with more weight. The soft attack underpins the tonal fusion of piano tone and preparation sound. The high sound quality of the recording (sound: Marco Melchior) contributes decisively to the tonal brilliance, which portrays the grand piano very directly and yet warmly and spatially. Agnese Toniutti has succeeded in making an excellent recording of the Sonatas and Interludes, in which she coherently and nuancedly balances machine-like and human agogic as well as preparation and piano sound. The sound result is unique.
In the last couple of months two very interesting publications have been published about Fluxus, and I’m very pleased to have given my little contribution.
One is a double CD / LP in limited edition, Fluxus & NeoFluxus / Stolen Symphony (Vol. 1), by Sub Rosa label, enriched with a 72 pages booklet, full of texts, notes, images around Fluxus movement. Petr Studený and his Czech Opening Performance Orchestra had the idea to commission a collection of Fluxus recordings to some musicians devoted to this repertoire: Deborah Walker, Anna Clementi Ohlin, Werner Durand, Luciano Chessa, Miroslav Beinhauer, myself and several others. I contributed with new recordings of pieces by Mieko Shiomi (Direction music for a pianist, for spoken voice, piano and cardboards), Dick Higgins (Emmett Williams’ Ear) and (inspired by) La Monte Young (Composition 1960 #15), and some re-releases by Philip Corner and Giancarlo Cardini. But the entire first part of the collection features also music by Eric Andersen, George Brecht, Ay-O, John Cage, Giuseppe Chiari, Henning Christiansen, Öyvind Fahlström, Ken Friedman, Sten Hanson, Geoffrey Hendricks, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Joe Jones, Bengt af Klintberg, Milan Knizak, Alison Knowles, Larry Miller, George Maciunas, Sara Miyamoto, Nam June Paik, Yoko Ono, Opening Performance Orchestra, Benjamin Patterson, Josef Anton Riedl, Terry Riley, Takako Saito, Tomas Schmit, Dieter Schnebel, Yasunao Tone, Ben Vautier, Yoshi Wada. The release is listed among the ten Best Contemporary Classical on Bandcamp in May 2023, here is the link.
An other collector’s item, but above all a valuable study tool, as far as I am concerned, is the beautiful book/catalogue “FLUXUS 1962-2022 – SIXTY YEARS IN FLUX”, published after the big event/exhibition in Genoa dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the founding of Fluxus (Sept-Nov 2022). In addition to the images documenting the exhibit, which alone would be worth the catalogue by themselves, the book is full of statements, testimonies and interviews by Fluxus artists and scholars. It is edited by Caterina Gualco, who has devoted endless energies to promoting Fluxus movement in Italy since the 70ies, Francesca Serrati and Leo Lecci. Honoured to see the program of my September concert in Genoa at the end of the volume, designed by artist Mauro Panichella as all the other graphics of the event. The book is available at Museo d’arte contemporanea di Villa Croce in Genoa.
More about Lucia Dlugoszewski’s timbre-piano: it just has been published an article written in collaboration with Kate Doyle, PhD, for Contemporary Music Review Special Issue: Engaging Analysis and Performance. Kate is assistant Professor of Music in the Department of Arts, Culture & Media at Rutgers University—Newark, and I had the pleasure of collaborating with her for several years now about the work of Dlugoszewski. This is our more recent production after partecipating to Toronto Symposium and to the American Musicological Society Annual Meeting. The title of the paper is Problem as Possibility: A Dialogue about Performance and Analysis with Lucia Dlugoszewski’s Experimental Notation as Case Study (https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2023.2193090). Here is the abstract:
The musical score can be a site for dynamic exchange between performance and analysis, a place for conversation about material and meaning. As is typical in conversation, conundrums or disagreements generate new ideas and new forms; problems become possibilities. Such is the case in navigating the scores of Lucia Dlugoszewski, who sought radical ways to produce and notate sound forms from around 1950 until her death in 2000. This article is not intended to serve as a survey of Dlugoszewski’s work but to document an exploration of the role that dialogue plays when performing and analysing musical repertoires. Its two authors will perform an excerpt of an ongoing dialogue about the challenges of navigating Dlugoszewski’s innovative scores. A circularity emerges as every potential solution is performed, evaluated, and questioned anew; through this cycle, analysis and performance become a unified, continual process. A thesis emerges from the dialogue: Dlugoszewski’s scores are a documentation of logic that is not present as much as one that is, a kind of notation in reverse, an ideal realised through performance at the edge of practical execution.
Der Freitag and Die junge Welt also wrote about March Subtle Matters recital in Berlin at MaerzMusik Festival (music by Dlugoszewski, Corner, Dun). Quoting Der Freitag in the words of Michael Jäger, …the program announced “sound worlds full of unexpected textures and resonances,” and it was not an over-promise… In the compositions of Lucia Dlugoszewski (1925-2000), Tan Dun (*1957) and Philip Corner (*1933), playing not only on the keys but even more so on the strings under an open piano has always been the main move. We have heard it before, but in the compositions presented here (Tan Dun’s bears the name C-A-G-E, fingering for piano [1994], which refers not only to a sequence of notes, but also to that great initiator, and thus implicitly puts Cage on the same plane as B-A-C-H), the strings are often used like a zither, and sound almost like a zither, sometimes melodious, sometimes “sublimely” chaotic, both then occasionally doubled by the keys – a piano, so to speak, in dialogue with itself. As if communicating with [the] unconscious…
Very excited to take part to MaerzMusik Festival – Berliner Festspiele in Berlin! On March, 24th I will play “Subtle Matters”, with music by Lucia Dlugoszewski, Philip Corner and Tan Dun, following my 2021 release by Neuma Records and adding a premiere of Philip Corner. The recital is part of “Contemplations into the Radical Others”, a long-term project by Maerz Musik focussing on composer Lucia Dlugoszewski in cooperation with the Erick Hawkins Dance Company, Ensemble Musikfabrik and many others. Here you can find the program of the evening, featuring me and Ensemble Musikfabrik, here you have the whole program of the festival, and here there’s an interesting review about Dlugoszewski‘s life and work.
Delighted to take up the challenge of ERT/Piccoli Palchi and bring my experience of piano experimentation to the very young. After a workshop in classes with kids from 6 to 11 years old, and one with their teachers, I will play in concert for them. The program will include one of their compositions based on selected extended piano techniques along with pieces by some of the distinguished experimenters of their times: Debussy, Cowell, Bartok, Kurtag, Cage.
From kids to adults, very happy to have accepted a teaching position at Conservatorio“G.Tartini” in Trieste.
Here a new review of Subtle Matters by Paolo Carradori for Le Salon Musical: “I don’t know if courage can represent a useful category that can be spent in music criticism, but one thing is certain, this album is a courageous work. … Subtle Matters not only tells us how the piano not traditionally played, far from the bourgeois living rooms, can still give us surprising sound panoramas but also reminds us how the artist, whoever puts his hands inside the instrument, must necessarily put back into play, courageously re-discuss role and visions.”
Below some pics from the last colourful concert on March 26th at Moroso showroom – which in addition had an excellent acoustics. Music by John Cage, Tan Dun and Philip Corner for prepared piano, string piano and… regular one.
