13 Dec Irnerio 45C (my voice my void #2) and Hole
Source Credit: Content and images from Wall Street International Magazine by . Read the original article - https://www.meer.com/en/86093-irnerio-45c-my-voice-my-void-number-2-and-hole
Wednesday 18 December 2024 from 4 pm to 10 pm Xing in collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna
presents Irnerio 45C (my voice my void #2), durational sound performance by pianist Marino Formenti, who returns
to Bologna after the Nowhere project (2012). The event is a Hole located in the new Irnerio Wing of the Academy,
which can be accessed from Via Irnerio 45C, and during the day also from the entrance in Via Belle Arti 54.
Irnerio 45C (my voice my void #2)
“In my voice my void #2 I resume exploring the technical and musical possibilities of the ENSPIRE player piano. The
ENSPIRE is the latest generation of disklaviers, i.e. computer driven pianos: machines capable of “playing by themselves”.
With a piano player you can not only, for example, transform any MIDI data into music, but also record in real time – and
above all modify – previously performed music.
What interests me, however, is not so much the technical possibilities of the instrument – which are too easily astonishing – but rather the relationships that can be created with this instrument; to discover any consequent new musical
temporalities that may arise from it; to question mutations, declinations, variations of the idea of presence, its probing or
its denial; and also to see what relationships with a so-called audience – with the individuals who compose it – can derive
from it.
When composing or improvising a performance I encourage myself starting from the “others”. Already existing texts and
messages incite me, even more if they are distant in time and space (except for appropriations; indeed, including
appropriations). Anyway, I have more respect for popular cultures, where is written “anonymous” instead of the name of
an author-owner. One has to start from something: Morton Feldman used to say that in any case “one starts from nothing
to arrive at even less”. Having to make a temporary nest among you, I thought I’d start playing with the genomes and
chromosomes of this place: in short, I visited the catacombs and cellars a bit, in search of crucial stories, sound models
of this place and this Academy and community.
At the center of these six hours are fragments of musical expressions from 1956, the date of birth of the architecture of
these places: the first publication of Bach’s Goldberg variations by Glenn Gould; the first recordings of a brand new jazz,
Lennie Tristano, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans; the twisted Milano by the Modern Jazz Quartet; the no less crooked Troisième
Sonate by Pierre Boulez, and the equal and opposite Winter music by John Cage. In short, brazen souls of such a two
faced, ambiguous moment. Chet Baker’s sweet, painful, tired voice; the abyss badly hidden in a song by Dalida, Bambino.
Then other snapshots emerged, other communities. At the time of the foundation of the very first Academy – 1582 – even
the musical texts were, perfectly or badly, poised between voice and void: between a very heated, exaggerated hyper
individualism and the mystical self-denial that fully- or better ecstatically – embraced the Counter-Reformation. Orlando
di Lasso and Gesualdo – two extremists of the first hour – were already trying to make this impossible circle square.
And finally the rationalism – and mysticism – of the first decades of the 1700s, when a new society and a new Academy
were born; and the Jesuit College which is its headquarters was also erected, while the French harpsichordists – d’Anglebert
and Clérambault, among others – literally killed time, precisely musical time, with some last very silent Prélude non mesuré.
But all these texts – these very human, even too human messages – are just the ingredients that I find in the fridge today
and here. Italian cuisine, indeed. If I had found anything else I would have had to make do. What will remain of it, we will
see.
Ah, we’ll see: maybe I’ll ask whoever is there to help me; maybe I’ll just hope you’ll lie down with me, like me, killing
time”.
Hole is a format that Xing has been experimenting with since 2022, occupying and activating non-institutional places as
a temporary redefinition of a public space.
The place where this new Hole is located has a layered history. The building, built in 1956, was home to the artistic high
school of Bologna until the early 1980s, and shows the typical compositional signs of modernist architecture, as result of
the collaboration between the architect Melchiorre Bega and the sculptor Fabio Farpi Vignoli (also designer of the theater
of Academy erected in 1957, which was the experimental classroom for teaching scenography, and which hosted – in the
1990s – the independent experience of the TPO). In this building on 28 October 2024, after over a year of intense
restoration work, the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna inaugurated the new Irnerio Wing: approximately 2,000
square meters of surface area distributed over four floors, entirely redeveloped by the Egidio Architect Studio Lomi, which
includes a large room on the ground floor of approximately 170 square meters intended for student activities, a space that
will host Marino Formenti for this occasion.
Marino Formenti is a pianist, performer, composer, conductor. His manifold music itinerary seems to reveal a restless
need to discover: a quest that lead him to conceive radically new concert formats and art/music performances. In radically
innovative piano recitals (Ma mort, Liszt inspections, Torso) he creates a “streams of consciousness” in a continuous flow.
(Lincoln Center New York, Lucerne Festival, Wigmore Hall London a.o.). For these projects he has been hailed by the Los
Angeles times as “a Glenn Gould of the 21st century”. Liszt inspections was 2015 Best of New York times and 2014 of
the New Yorker.
Marino Formenti
has appeared at the international festivals in Salzburg, Lucerne, Edinburgh a.o.; at Philharmonie Berlin, Musikverein and
Konzerthaus Vienna, Disney Hall Los Angeles, Festival d’Automne in Paris, Philharmonie in St. Petersburg or Suntory Hall
Tokyo. He was Artist in Residence at Lincoln Center New York, Wigmore Hall London, Teatro Colón Buenos Aires or
BeethovenFest Bonn 2020. His orchestral engagements as a soloist include performances with the New York Philharmonics,
L.A. Philharmonics, Münchner Philharmoniker, Cleveland Orchestra, Gustav Mahler Chamber Orchestra, along with
conductors such as Franz Welser-Möst, Gustavo Dudamel, Kent Nagano, Daniel Harding, Esa-Pekka Salonen. At the
invitation of pianist Maurizio Pollini, he has conducted with him at Teatro la Scala in Milan, Salle Pleyel in Paris, and Parco
della Musica in Rome. As a creator of sound and musical performances and installations, he has been guest of institutions
such as Art Basel, Palais de Tokyo Paris, MUMOK, KHM and Albertina Vienna, Gulbenkian Foundation Lisbon, Onassis
Foundation Athens, Berlin Art Week, Milan Triennale, MdM Salzburg, Madre and Nitsch Foundation in Naples.
Partners: Regione Emilia-Romagna, Comune di Bologna. Collaboration: Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna. Media partners:
Edizioni Zero, ATPdiary, NEU Radio.
Source Credit: Content and images from Wall Street International Magazine by . Read the original article - https://www.meer.com/en/86093-irnerio-45c-my-voice-my-void-number-2-and-hole