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!
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
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!
Two performances coming up soon, one in Italy and one in US, celebrating the centennial of two composers, Aldo Clementi and Lucia Dlugoszewski. I’ll have the pleasure to perform with great musicians and dancers.
On Thursday May 29, 9 pm in Tavagnacco, Udine, at Moroso Design Outlet, organized by Salotto Musicale Fvg, I will play some duo pieces in the show of singer and performer (or actress of the voice, as she properly says) Anna Clementi. A. A. Clementi is the title of the event. Anna in fact is the talentuos daughter of Aldo Clementi, one of the main Italian composer of the after-war generation, and the concert is dedicated to his centennial. We will play pieces for voice and piano by Aldo Clementi, John Cage, Mieko Shiomi, Erik Satie and she will perform solos for voice by Emanuele Casale, Morton Feldman, Yoko Ono, Dieter Schnebel. Info and bookings. [Edit: pics below]
Soon after I will fly again to US. On Tuesday June 3, 8 pm in Washington DC at the Thomas Jefferson Building I will perform in a celebrative event organized by the Library of Congress. The (effortless) now: Dances of Erick Hawkins and Lucia Dlugoszewski will celebrate Lucia Dlugoszewski’s centennial, and the Erick Hawkins Dance Company-New York will be dancing the original dances by Hawkins created in a very close collaboration with the music by Lucia Dlugoszewski. Katherine Duke, director of the company, and myself spent several months to reconstruct the works from the original documentation. We made a first performance in Philadelphia a couple of weeks ago where I already had the priviledge of following the beatiful duets of dancers Jason Hortin and Hayley Meier in Here and Now With Watchers and the sparkling quartets in Cantilever. In this program I will also play with Min-Young Kim, top first violin of Daedalus Quartet, an intricate and captivating piece for violin and piano by H. Meltzer. The event is in collaboration with Bowerbird-Philadelphia. Info and tickets [Edit: and pics below].
, ⬇️ Here are some pics from the performance with Anna Clementi, courtesy of Davide Maestrutti for Salotto Musicale Fvg, and below some from the performance at Library of Congress, Washington DC, for the centennial of Lucia Dlugoszewski with Min-Young Kim and Hawkins Dance Company, by Shawn Miller, Library of Congress.
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Min-Young Kim, on violin, and Agnese Toniutti, on piano, perform Harold Metzler’s “Kreisleriana” in the Coolidge Auditorium, June 3, 2025. Photo by Shawn Miller/Library of Congress.
Note: Privacy and publicity rights for individuals depicted may apply.Min-Young Kim, on violin, and Agnese Toniutti, on piano, perform Harold Metzler’s “Kreisleriana” in the Coolidge Auditorium, June 3, 2025. Photo by Shawn Miller/Library of Congress.
Note: Privacy and publicity rights for individuals depicted may apply.Min-Young Kim, on violin, and Agnese Toniutti, on piano, perform Harold Metzler’s “Kreisleriana” in the Coolidge Auditorium, June 3, 2025. Photo by Shawn Miller/Library of Congress.
Note: Privacy and publicity rights for individuals depicted may apply.Hayley Meier and Jason Hortin of the Erick Hawkins Dance Company perform excerpts of “Here and Now With Watchers” with Agnese Toniutti on piano in the Coolidge Auditorium, June 3, 2025. Photo by Shawn Miller/Library of Congress.
Note: Privacy and publicity rights for individuals depicted may apply.Jason Hortin of the Erick Hawkins Dance Company performs excerpts of “Here and Now With Watchers” with Agnese Toniutti on piano in the Coolidge Auditorium, June 3, 2025. Photo by Shawn Miller/Library of Congress.
Note: Privacy and publicity rights for individuals depicted may apply.Hayley Meier of the Erick Hawkins Dance Company performs excerpts of “Here and Now With Watchers” with Agnese Toniutti on piano in the Coolidge Auditorium, June 3, 2025. Photo by Shawn Miller/Library of Congress.
Note: Privacy and publicity rights for individuals depicted may apply.Hayley Meier and Jason Hortin of the Erick Hawkins Dance Company perform excerpts of “Here and Now With Watchers” with Agnese Toniutti on piano in the Coolidge Auditorium, June 3, 2025. Photo by Shawn Miller/Library of Congress.
Note: Privacy and publicity rights for individuals depicted may apply.Jason Hortin of the Erick Hawkins Dance Company performs excerpts of “Cantilever” in the Coolidge Auditorium, June 3, 2025. Photo by Shawn Miller/Library of Congress.
Note: Privacy and publicity rights for individuals depicted may apply.Members of the Erick Hawkins Dance Company perform excerpts of “Cantilever” in the Coolidge Auditorium, June 3, 2025. Photo by Shawn Miller/Library of Congress.
Note: Privacy and publicity rights for individuals depicted may apply.Members of the Erick Hawkins Dance Company perform excerpts of “Cantilever” in the Coolidge Auditorium, June 3, 2025. Photo by Shawn Miller/Library of Congress.
Note: Privacy and publicity rights for individuals depicted may apply.Members of the Erick Hawkins Dance Company perform excerpts of “Cantilever” in the Coolidge Auditorium, June 3, 2025. Photo by Shawn Miller/Library of Congress.
Note: Privacy and publicity rights for individuals depicted may apply.
Getting ready for departure, destination United States! After two shows in Philadelphia – all pieces for piano and timbre piano by Lucia Dlugoszewski performed in solo and with Hawkins Dance Company (see previous article) – I will be in Brooklyn, NY at Blank Forms, playing music by Scelsi, Cardini, Berio, Higgins and Corner. Then going South to Houston, Texas for an Open Cage show at Memorial Classical Music Series. Below all the details and some pics taken during the performances:
May 9, Philadelphia, FringeArts: “Pure Lucia”, music by Lucia Dlugoszewski for piano and timbre-piano with the dances by Erick Hawkins performed by Hawkins Company New York info May 10, Philadelphia, FringeArts: “Pure Lucia”, music by Lucia Dlugoszewski for solo timbre-piano info May 11, Brooklyn, New York, Blank Forms, music by G. Cardini, G.Scelsi, D.Higgins, P.Corner, L.Berio info May 14, Houston, Texas, Memorial Classical Music Series, music for piano, string piano and prepared piano by John Cage and Tan Dun info
I’ll be back in US in June, in Washington DC at the Library of Congress:
June 3, Washington DC, Library of Congress, “The effortless now”, music by L.Dlugoszewki for piano and timbre-piano with Erick Hawkins Dance Company and a duo by H.Melzter with violinist Min-Young Kim, Daedalus Quartet. info here
Brooklyn, New York, May 11 at Blank Forms, pics courtesy of Peter Gannushkin:
Houston, TX, May 14, Memorial Classical Music Series:
Next month I’ll fly to USA for some performances dedicated to composer Lucia Dlugoszewski. First stop in Philadelphia at the festival organized by Bowerbird, “Pure Lucia”, a retrospective of the life and work of the composer taking place at FringeArts on May 9th (program) and 10th (program). Two evenings fully dedicated to Dlugoszewski’s music for ensemble, solo instruments and timbre-piano, including the projection of a film by Marie Menken and the beautiful dances performed by the Hawkins Dance Company, curated by director and choreographer Katherine Duke. I’m very excited to be part of the project and to perform my newly transcribed version of Here&Now With Watchers. I expect this will be a further opportunity to deepen my knowledge about the composer. On this respect, Bowerbird will host a series of on-line webinars called “Lunch with Lucia”: I’ll give my contribution on April, 21st, with “Sound Inside: Exploring Dlugoszewski’s Timbre Piano”, but I’m very much looking forward to all the other episodes, starting April 10th!
After Philadelphia, the next stop will be in Washington DC, at the Library of Congress, in June.
Again at work on one of LuciaDlugoszewski’s seminal pieces for timbre-piano, Here and Now with Watchers. An evening-length piece written for the dance of Erick Hawkins and his new-born dance company, it was the result of a joined creative effort lasting years. The complexity and beauty of the piece, premiered in 1957, also represent many strong aesthetic and philosophical principles that Dlugoszewski and Hawkins developed in the following years, in each own field of art. Dlugoszewski also took the occasion to formalize some important statements about music and the nature of timbre-piano. The composition was created in close conjunction with dance, but ready to be standing alone (she performed it as a concert piece with the title “Archaic Timbre Piano Music”). I concentrated my efforts on three sections of the piece. As usual, there is not a proper score: Dlugoszewski wrote for her own performances, and her notation – when existing – is not at all exhaustive for a performer. This time I had the help of a precious folder kept at Library of Congress, Washington DC, with many notated pages clearly referable to one of the sections of “Here and Now”, tough in mixed order and probably coming from different times in composition and revision. There are even a handful of pages in nice copy, providing precious notational elements. Still, this useful but scattered material is not enough. For my transcription I used as a main source one video of the 60ies with Hawkins performing the dance and Dlugoszewski the music, cross-checking sound and movement with the dance score. As I learned in “Cantilever” music, counting is mandatory in case of Dlugoszewski/Hawkins compositions! Constant discussion with Katherine Duke, director of the Hawkins Dance Company, followed the progression of the work. Comparing these different materials had been very interesting to gather further information on the process of creation and eventually notation of the music; I have the feeling of an improved knowledge of Dlugoszewski’s musical world. I guess, as with the other pieces, that the destiny of this transcription will be to be revised several times, at least one for each future performance. But for now the next task is to make the music of “Here and Now” alive again, ready in some weeks! Tag on Lucia Dlugoszewski
Working on Here and Now With Watchers by L.Dlugoszewski
MaerzMusik collaborative project “Contemplations into the Radical Others”, dedicated to composer Lucia Dlugoszewski, was not only a precious occasion to listen to and perform her music. It gave us the opportunity to share the extensive research done so far, and gather together with people equally motivated. The Library spaces hosted several theoretical interventions in the form of talks, gently led by musicologist Monika Zyla and warmly open to the public. After the official presentation of the project, as an introduction to ensemble Musik Fabrik’s concert at Radyal System on the 20th, I’ve been included in the conversation “Ensemble Perspectives on Performing Dlugoszewski’s Music” with hornist Christine Chapman and conductor Lilianna Krych on the 21st March at Berliner Festspiele.
Saturday 23rd was the day of the performative lecture “Problem as Possibility: Dialoguing with Dlugoszewski’s Scores” with musicologist Kate Doyle, PhD.
From MaerzMusik Library booklet.
Kate is a very sharp and creative mind with whom I had the pleasure to collaborate from the very beginning in my research on Dlugoszewski. Our time spent in conversation and reflection was and still is a constant opportunity to deepen my knowledge, on the composer’s ouvre and in general. For MaerzMusik Symposium we decided to use our article published in Contemporary Music Review as a starting point for a further dialogue where we could collect the new elements emerged so far. The form of dialogue characterizes our exchange and is particularly fitted to an approach to Dlugoszewski’s work. We did this “in performance”, orchestrating a form with structure and openness, as the composer’s piano works often do. While preparing our intervention, we notated our ideas in a visual form, and Dlugoszewski’s visual maps and notes often came to our mind. Here you can see an extract, published in MaerzMusik Zine as a presentation:
Doyle-Toniutti lecture presentation for MaerzMusik Zine
Once more, our research on Dlugoszewski, instead of giving us certainty of answers, brought us directly into the experience of processes. Which is much more fun.
Here are some nice pictures taken under the impressive graphic reproducing Lucia Dlugoszewski’s dynamic scale map (take a look at this). You can see curator and researcher Dustin Hurt, Hawkins archive curator and long standing company member Louis Kavouras and musicologist Kate Doyle. Thanks for the pics to Ly Thien Co Friedrich, our guardian angel of production.
Dancer and choreographer Erick Hawkins and composer Lucia Dlugoszewski met in 1952, soon after the foundation of Hawkins own dance company. Hawkins danced before – first male dancer – in the company of Martha Graham. Hawkins explains in his writings the importance of music – live music – in au pair connection with dance and its “free-flow” movement. I already read all this and was excited to experience it with my hands and eyes working with dancer and choreographer Katherine Duke, former assistant of Lucia Dlugoszewski and actual director of the Hawkins Dance Company in New York. In fact Dlugoszewski, composer in residence of the Dance Company, took over the direction and even choreographic duties after Hawkins’s death in 1994. But, as long-standing Hawkins company dancer and Hawkins archive curator Louis Kavouras pointed out during our stay in Berlin, she was choreographing all the time even before. This was an interesting statement especially in relation with all the materials I saw at the Library of Congress. Maybe Dlugoszewki’s mind set was “in tune” with movement as much as with sound…
During rehearsals. This is one of the statements quoted by Dlugoszewski’s writings, a nice “cadeau” by MaerzMusik Festival.
This hypothesis became stronger while rehearsing with the (amazing) dancers selected for the project, Juan Corres, Laia Vancells Pi, Marco Rizzi,Kristina Berger. Kristina was also performing the solo dance “Fountain in the Middle of the Room” with the music of the first two movement of Exacerbated Subtlety Concert for timbre-piano by Dlugoszewski. Here is what Katherine Duke writes about it:
“A Fountain in the Middle of the Room” was for me an intense journey with Lucia who is both the choreographer and the composer of the piece. She had wanted to premiere the solo in 1999 along with her beautiful new dance “Radical Ardent”, a huge work with eleven dancers organised in duets. […] She resumed working on “Fountain” to premiere it in April of 2000 with her epic work “Motherwell Amor”. Unfortunately, we lost Lucia on opening night; she had passed away in her apartment still working on the upcoming performance. The company and musicians performed “Motherwell Amor” that evening; “A Fountain in the Middle of the Room” was not performed as she was the sole musician. Lucia and I had a performance date set for the following month to perform the solo. Needless to say, I was devastated, thrown into wrenching times but forced myself to work on arranging the solo which I premiered on 26 May 2000 in silence and dedicated it to her. As opportunities to perform the solo continued to arise, I searched Lucia’s music to find something that felt connected. Finally, two of the four parts of her “Exacerbated Subtlety Concert (Why does a Woman Love a Man?)” seemed a match. […] For this dance, Lucia and I discussed a revolution of subtlety, the high risk of elegance and a torn non-linear wild elegance of space throughout the delicacy of construction. Lucia daringly embodied that delicate mystical ‘something’ of seeing and hearing for the first time which the haiku poets practice without respite.”
Rehearsing Fountain in the Middle of the Room, Kristina Berger dancer, choreography and music by Lucia Dlugoszewski, Exacerbated Subtlety Concert I and II. Pics by Louis Kavouras
Cantilever (1963) has a different energy, sunny, joyful and sparkling. Dlugoszewski sets the music so that she could keep constant eye-contact with the dancers, and literally follow them “step by step”. Louis Kavouras confirmed this, also telling us that she often corrected dancers in the studio, as she knew the choreography better than them! The rehearsals confirmed my first impression transcribing the piece (see Part I): there is an intimate connection between sound and movement, big or minimal, and a love for small precious details that Dlugoszewski and Hawkins clearly shared. It’s not something flashy, dramatic or showy; the adjectives that come to my mind now that I try to describe it are “simple, beautiful, elegant, subtle”… some of the favourite words used by Dlugoszewski. Looking at the dancers literally embodying these concepts, under the guide of Katherine, left me a huge impression.
…revolution is in perception rather than conception…
As for the rest of the program, including four piano solo pieces, that’s what I wrote in the booklet:
“[…] Henry Cowell and Alan Hovhaness both received commissions by Erick Hawkins Dance Company, although not for piano solo works. They were both connected to an important figure in Dlugoszewski’s formative early years in New York – though quite cumbersome in the later years: John Cage. Cowell pioneered the exploration of new sound production both on the keyboard and on the inside of the piano, and transmitted his explorative attitude to Cage, one of his students. I can’t think about prepared piano, or even timbre piano, without considering the mysterious sounds and never-before-seen gestures of Cowell’s “The Banshee” (1925). And the outrageous (for the time) clusters of “The Tides of Manaunaun” (1912) opened the field to among other things some of Dlugoszewski’s favourite techniques in “Cantilever”. “Spring Music with Wind” (1973) by Eleanor Hovda is a solo piano piece for extended techniques. Subtle and delicate, connected strongly with breath, gesture and voice, it goes in search of new sounds with lightness. Quoting conductor Jeannine Wagar, “The title, ‘Spring Music with Wind’, suggests the flow of energy and its non-quantifiable shape”, a concept that Hovda often underlines and closely links to the timbre of sound. In this piece she prescribes the use of friction mallets and a curved glass bottle.” Alan Hovhaness’s “Shalimar op. 177” (1950, rev. 1951) belongs to his “Armenian period”. As the son of an Armenian immigrant, he became increas- ingly attracted to Armenian and Eastern music after an academic training. In his own words, “Shalimar” was composed in Kashmir “after visiting the Mogul gardens and many beautiful mountains in the Himalayan regions. The foun- tains no longer gush forth their music and beauty in the Shalimar gardens, but the memory of their sound and visual wonder among the great Chenar trees, with steep, rugged mountains rising in the background, was in my imagination and I summed up the lost scenes during the days of Mogul grandeur. The form of the Suite, with its interludes for borders, suggests that carpet-like design of Mogul gardens.”
Friends in the audienceLooking at KristinaHere she isCowellHovdaHovhanessCantilever: Marco, Juan, LaiaCantilever: Marco and JuanCantilever: Kristina, Juan, LaiaAll of us with Katherine Duke
