A tribute for the centennial of Morton Feldman (1926/1987) on the 27th of November in Udine for Salotto Musicale Fvg. As more and more often, I find myself surrounded not just by music but by the relationships that some music creates, reverberating in time and space from one composer to the other. Understandably the fascination I feel for Feldman’s music is shared by many others; among them there is for sure composer Giancarlo Cardini, whose inner music world was clearly close to Feldman’s rarefied, spacious, resonant landscape. And composer Philip Corner, who knew and played with Feldman since a long time, just told me how much he likes his music (in fact some years ago he dedicated him a work in an hidden homage). The last composition phase of Feldman is characterized by very long durations: from the one hour and a half of Triadic Memories to the monumental (and beautiful) 6 hours of the second Quartet. But his very last piano piece, Palais de Mari, brings together the quiet spaciousness of the large works with a limited duration – more or less half an hour. The ideal piece to follow Feldman’s resonance into the works of his fellows.
A nice evening indeed the one at MAMBo – Museum of Modern Art in Bologna on Saturday 26th September. It was a pleasure to be part of the celebration for the centennial of the composer and artist Giuseppe Chiari and I was very happy to visit the beautiful exhibition and listen to the fascinating performance of Metodi by Deborah and Chiara.
Here you can find the complete review of the concert by Paolo Carradori (in Italian) on Le Salon Musical. Below an extract in English, interpolated by some of the nice pics courtesy of Comune di Bologna | Settore Musei Civici | MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna made by Ornella De Carlo.
Agnese Toniutti draws up a Fluxus Cardboards For Giuseppe Chiari Solo program that involves composers who not only took more or less active part in the movement / non-movement Fluxus (of which the Florentine composer was the only Italian to be part as an official member since 1962) but share with Chiari the same vision of research, experimentation, musical action: Philip Corner, Giancarlo Cardini and Mieko Shiomi.
Intervalli n.2, Do, which is part of a twelve-part piano cycle, is a good entrance ticket to the world of Chiari. Arsonal blocks are suspended, they chase each other, they go as if filling an undefined space, they accumulate creating tensions. […] Toniutti chiselle every element, offers iridescing shapes in a scenario where performance rhythm and gesture complete a deep reading. With Exstensions of Giuseppe Chiari’s “DO”and Giuseppe Chiari’s “DO”further extended Corner plays, elaborates, expands the intervals. Extensions that regenerate new sounds, unexpected routes, sharp corners, bright waterfalls. Corner uses Chiari’s materials, summons them, as a launch pad for new explorations, in a dialogue with both composers stating that the score is never final.
If Chiari is above all known, even by those who frequent the contemporary field, for Gesti sul piano (a long gestation that goes from 1962 to 1976) there will be a good reason. Probably because it is among the first examples of music to see, a direct thread with the poetic of Fluxus. […] An action music that is never the same as itself, plastic, unpredictable. Toniutti, who knows very well that her role, her relationship with the instrument is constantly in question, chooses the path of a draining of the performative aspect in favor of a radical sound research.
The last violent vibration of Gesti still wanders when the scenario opens on Foglie d’autunno lentamente trascolorano. We will be able to define Cardini a pleasant anomaly in the framework of the new music of the second half of the twentieth century. What is it doing in that context of extreme research a composer who claims to love melody unconditionally? In Bologna the answer is given by the Friulian pianist who knows the Tuscan composer well by proposing this short masterpiece. In Foglie d’autunno trascolorano… Cardini shows how the melody, purified of clichés and vices, can tell us through beauty, purity of silence, poetry of the fleeting moment, the restlessness, problems and fragility of contemporary man. In the Cardinian plot the evoked melodic track is always stained, wounded by a restlessness, a doubt, which makes it current, never taken for granted, never cheesy. In the game of friendships, complicity and homage Chiari, between 1997 and 1998, wrote PCA (Per Cardini), two booklets containing eight short piano compositions. Here shines the intimacy of the dialogical exchange, through short, dry phrases. The composer seems to want to approach the poetics of his friend, managing only to touch it.
The Toniutti set closes with Direction music for a pianist by Shiomi. The pianist also becomes a narrator on poetic fragments, reflections on art and life. […] The performance creates a direct relationship with the public through the cardboard as musical objects, the word, the monologue, the piano understood as a congenius capable of generating an action that amplifies the communicative ability of the work.
On Saturday 26th September 5.00 pm I’ll be in Bologna at MAMBo-Modern Art Museum playing at the finissage of the exhibition that celebrates the centennial of Giuseppe Chiari: Giuseppe Chiari, partitura per un museo (score for a museum). The piano solo recital Fluxus Carboards for Giuseppe Chiari follows some of the artistic and human connections between members and friends of the Fluxus movement. The programme includes two premieres: Chiari’s pieces dedicated to Giancarlo Cardini and Philip Corner‘s pieces inspired by Chiari, as well as other works by Chiari, Cardini and Mieko Shiomi.
Here are some programme notes: “The programme connects three compositions by Giuseppe Chiari from three different creative phases – included the notorious Gesti sul piano which accompanied him throughout his life – with some of the works of artists who where members or sympathizers of Fluxus movement. I had and have the privilege of meeting and working with composers Giancarlo Cardini, Mieko Shiomi, Philip Corner. Philip Corner, one of the founders of Fluxus, openly dialogues with Chiari’s music: the core idea of DO, the second of Intervalli collection of 1950, expands and transforms while resounding in Corner’s creative world. Giancarlo Cardini (1940/2022), pianist and composer, champion of new music and for some time close to Fluxus, was one of the performers of Gesti sul piano until 1972, when the same author became the interpreter. To Cardini are dedicated the two folders of PCA (For Cardini), composed in 1997 and 1998. Cardini himself played some of the sections of the collection at the concert for Chiari’s 80th birthday in 2006. The full work is here premiered. The cardboards mentioned in the title refer to the ones played in Direction Music for a pianist by Mieko Shiomi: performative and musical objects, poetic fragments gently opening to a reflection on art that Giuseppe Chiari, whose music was included in the first Fluxus Festival in Wiesbaden in 1962, had been systematically developing for his entire lifetime. His musical actions as well as his written works still question the great shared meanings of music, musician, instrument and their ideal and real role in our society.”
After this programme, Deborah Walker and Chiara Saccone will perform Chiari’s Metodi per suonare.
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
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
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.
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
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.
