Giovanni Sollima: Viaggio in Italia, Part I

VIAGGIO IN ITALIA — Giovanni Sollima

A suite in several movements—variously inspired the movements evoke in turn the political and intellectual history of Italy, its art, landscape and dominant personalities. The first and final movements memorialize the German-born Frederick II (1195-1250), Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily. "A very modern political figure," like Sollima sad, "open to the world and different cultures. He's in our DNA." Ghe other movements is dedicated to Giotto, Leonardo, an earthquake at sea, the architecture of Pisa, the paintings of Arcimboldo and Giorgione, an imaginary city out of Italo Calvino, the Goldoni's tale Zobeide and others...

Vocal numbers in a new version are written on texts by Michelangelo Buonarotti (sonnet number 242), Borromini ("Homo erudito perfetto sapere"), Giordano Bruno (from "Bestia trionfante" and "Dell'infinito universo e mondi").

A love poem by Michelangelo is set as a jaunty madrigal, in contrast to excruciating deathbed utterances of Borromini and the philosopher Giordano Bruno.

"The voice of the cello is always close to song" - sad the composer Giovanni Sollima. The original version of "Viaggio in Italia" received its world premiere at Carnegie Hall.

SAILING OFF — Iraida Yusupova

A work of 2 different sound layers which must sound freely & independently from one another, and inside of each layer. The first layer is made up of 4 (more or less) saxophones. Shakespeare's poetry is ciphered in music and sounded by the musicians who pretend to be sailors sailing off, waving farewell to their wives and girl-friends. The other layer is an invisible female voice which belongs to Serena, seducing sailors in order to ruin them. The Soprano sings her part (after Marina Tzvetaeva's poem) freely and independently from saxophones.

The Composers:

GIOVANNI SOLLIMA

Giovanni Sollima is a true virtuoso of the cello, playing for him is not an end in itself, but a means of communicating with the world. He is a composer out of the ordinary, he communicates with a music full of mediterranean rhythms, with a melodic vein typically Italian, his world covers all eras “from the Jurassic of the Cello” as he calls the baroque period to the "Metal". He writes mainly for the cello and contributes significantly to the creation of new repertoire for his instrument.

Sollima was born in Palermo into a family of musicians. He studied cello with Giovanni Perriera and Antonio Janigro and composition with his father Eliodoro Sollima and Milko Kelemen. From an early age he worked with musicians such as Claudio Abbado, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Jörg Demus, Martha Argerich, Riccardo Muti, Yuri Bashmet, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Ruggero Raimondi, Bruno Canino, DJ Scanner, Victoria Mullova, Patti Smith, Philip Glass and Yo-Yo Ma. His works as a soloist with orchestra and various ensembles –unfolds between official and alternative locations: Brooklyn Academy of Music, Alice Tully Hall, Knitting Factory and Carnegie Hall (New York), Wigmore Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall (London), Salle Gaveau (Paris), Santa Cecilia in Rome,RomaEuropaFestival (Roma), Teatro San Carlo (Naples), Kunstfest (Weimar), Kronberg Cello Festival , Teatro Massimo di Palermo, Teatro alla Scala (Milan), International Music Festival in Istanbul, Cello Biennale (Amsterdam), Tokyo Summer Festival, Venice Biennale, Ravenna Festival, "The Sounds of the Dolomites", Ravello Festival, Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala (Shanghai), Australian Chamber Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orkest in Amsterdam, Liverpool Philharmonic; ChicagoSymphony Orchestra commissioned a double cello concerto for himself and Yo Yo Ma, the premiere took place at Symphony Hall in Chicago in February 2014 with rave reviews. They repeated the collaboration in 2015 at the Tanglewood Festival in a new cello project called “Distant Mirror”.

In parallel to the cello, his curiosity led him to explore new frontiers in the field of composition through contamination between different genres making use also of oriental instruments, electrical and many of his invention. He also collaborated with other artists such as, for dance, Karole Armitage and Carolyn Carlson, for the theater with Bob Wilson, Alessandro Baricco, and cinema with Marco Tullio Giordana, Peter Greenaway, Lasse Gjertsen (DayDream, 2007) John Turturro and Anatoly Vasiliev.

Together with cellist and composer Enrico Melozzi he promotes the project 100 CELLOS created at the Teatro Valle in Rome in 2012. Musicians from all ages, formation, get together for 3 days and 3 nights of cello music, from baroque going through rock music to contemporary music written “during the concerts”:no limits.

Among the last albums Works”, “We Were Trees”, “Neapolitain Concertos”, “Caravaggio”, “Aquilarco”, “Onyricon”. In the spring, the release of the new disc for Decca "A Clandestine Night in Rome" with the Orchestra Notturna Clandestina and the second disc dedicated to the complete work for cello by Giovanni Battista Costanzi for Glossa Music. He presented in Italy the new project with an unconventional Ice Cello by luthier Tim Linhart.

Giovanni Sollima teaches at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, where he was awarded with the title of Academician, and at the Romanini Foundation in Brescia.

IRAIDA YUSUPOVA

Iraida Yusupova was born in Ashgabat, Turkmen SSR, and graduated from Moscow Conservatory with a degree in composition in 1987. She has written and composed 3 operas, 2 symphonies, 6 cantatas, 3 instrumental concerts, and a great deal of chamber music, electro-acoustic music, and music for cinema and theater spanning over the late eighties to the present day. Her various styles include minimalism, serialism, and several progressive new age styles.

Yusupova has written extensively for film and theater, as well as for the concert stage. Her works have won her several awards, including second place at the International Electroacoustic Conference (Boston, 1994), and has recently been selected by a group of Moscow journalists as among the top ten most notable Russian modern composers.

Yusupova is a member of the Composers' Union of Russia, the Association of Contemporary Music (ACM), and the Theremin Center; she has participated in a large number of contemporary music festivals, including the Russian festival "Alternativa," the "Gidon Cremer" Festival in Lockenhouse, Austria, the "Gent-Moscow-Gent" Festival in Gent, Belgium, and the "Klang och Rubel" Festival in Sweden and other .Her music has been performed in Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Sweden, Belgium, United States, Switzerland, Turkey and Hungary

Yusupova has spent considerable time writing music for Russian films, with dozens to her credit, including, "The Date," "Farewell," "Moscow Nightmusic," and "Thrown with the Wind" which won first prize at over forty film festivals. She is an autor of a new gender called MEDIA OPERA. She is a prominent member of the Filmmakers' Union of Russia.

The Performers:

NATALIA PAVLOVA

Moscow and Rome-based soprano Natalia Pavlova (who is a descendant of Russian national poet Alexander Pushkin) has graced the stages of Carnegie Hall, Moscow Chaikovsky State Conservatory, Auditorium Parco della Musica (Rome), and many others throughout the world.

Active in performing music from antiquity to today, she was a soloist for 6 years in the Moscow theater School of Dramatic Art, directed by Anatoly Vasiliev. Natalia has sung world premiere performances and recordings of works by composers Giovanni Sollima, Venus Rey and Iraida Yusupova, composed specially for her voice, as well as pieces by Vladimir Martynov. She serves on Artistic Council of The First Cultural International Festival, Russian-Rome, Palazzo Poli in Rome, and was recently awarded the Silver Lion at the Narnia International Festival, as well as the International "Clean Sound" Award. She recorded 3 CD with contemporary music in Da Vinci Classics ( Japan) and in Art Classics (Moscow)

ICQ-PROJECT ENSEMBLE—is a young musicians ensemble who combine avant-garde academic music with multimedia and other arts. The ensemble is already known for its non-trivial programs and a new look at the performance of academic music. The ensemble was presented with the Russian premiere of the last work of the legendary composer Steve Reich - Double Sextet, written for the Pulitzer Prize ceremony for the composer, then the ensemble included this work in the album Vaticination ("Prediction") along with the music of Valentin Silvestrov, Georgy Peletsis and John Adams, offering to compare the work of these authors, who influenced the entire modern musical culter.

The ensemble has repeatedly performed at the international House of Music , Moscow State Conservatory, A. Kozlov Jazz Club , the Stadium club with the projects of Therr Maitz and DaoDar / Techno-Ballet (Moscow, Russia) , as well as at the LegeArtis festivals, Aufwind Festival (Vienna, Austria), Soundscape (Nikola-Lenivets ) and other.
iCQ-project, directed by Asya Sorshneva

Musicians: Sorshneva Asya (Violino) Subbotin Evgeny (Viola) Sopova Irina (Viola) , Demina Olga (cello) , Ananich Sergey (cello)

https://www.facebook.com/nataliapavlova.soprano/
https://www.youtube.com/c/NataliaPavlovaSoprano

The Artist:

DOMENICO COLANTONI

Domenico Colantoni was an Italian Postwar & Contemporary painter and filmakker who was born in 1938 in Marsica (Italy). He attended a prestigious graphics institute in Urbino, and since the seventies he has exhibited various surreal graphic works and large oil paintings in various Italian cities, currently present in important museums, including The big exhibition in Cà d’Oro gallery in Rome, for which it attracted the attention of illustrious critics, first of all Del Guercio, who inserted it in the UTET Encyclopedia of Italian painting of the 20th century. Parallel to painting, he cultivated a passion for filmography, making experimental films presented in European festivals, universities, cultural clubs, museums, including the Center Pompidou in Paris.

Colantoni is the author of several pictorial cycles, such as those dedicated to the director Robert Altman and his wife (1979) and to his friend and admirer, famous Alberto Moravia, called Moravia further (1982), both presented at the Toninelli Gallery in the capital.

Starting in 1986, he began to paint a series of large still lifes, in which all his propensity for the senses was highlighted, accompanied by a vaguely metaphysical aura. In 1996 he held an exhibition at the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua and at Palazzo Ruspoli in Rome, entitled Georgica 2000.

Domenico is considered one of the greatest Italian painters of the second half of the twentieth century. He was a friend of Alberto Moravia, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Marco Ferreri, Giorgio de Chirico, and Robert Altman too, to whom, along with Moravia, he dedicated two major exhibitions in the 80s. Domenico Colantoni was also the author of 5 experimental films that stirred a great cultural debate in the 1980s, and also a veritable dispute between Natalia Ginsburg and Alberto Moravia in the press.

Soon, David Colantoni, Domenico's son, will establish a foundation with the vast material of his production and his documents. The artist passed away in 2018.