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Tovel, Jacopo Mazzonelli
The piano is undoubtedly the instrument that most represents the flowering of Western musical culture since the late 18th century to today. In this sense, the musical performance The Act of Touch, built on the artist Jacopo Mazzonelli'sopera ABCDEFG, allows a path to backward, a kind of regress to the essential, a path of creative "purification" devoted to to capturing the deepest image of what is being written: the material, the white keys, the seven notes, the alternating stave space.
Under the pseudonym Tovel, composer Matteo Franceschini relaunches the figure of the author/interpreter with the aim of experimenting with a new sound "from the inside"; direct involvement as a performer and the inevitable work to close contact with musicians presents itself as a true creative act. Jacopo Mazzonelli makes sculptures, assemblages and installations that investigate the wide border zone between visual arts and music. The investigation on the perception of rhythm and the becoming of time is accompanied to by that on the "musical gesture" understood as that which underlies the performance and not the sound produced: working on the interpretation and visualization of the sound dimension, the artist is confronted with instruments that he deconstructs, transforms and recomposes.
The Act of Touch throws the viewer inside an unexpected soundscape, where organized sound becomes apparent after a complex itinerary of material exploration. Ordered on multiple visual and conceptual levels, the performance takes the form of a gradual and conscious discovery of identity - a journey of knowledge and development that the use of the seven modified pianos/sculpture enables - where acoustic writing merges with electronic manipulation in real time. The new physiognomy of the pianos and the transformation of its materials is outlined as the starting point for a reflection on the very nature of the relationship between sound and matter.
The performance is a project of Tovel and Jacopo Mazzonelli, who together with pianist Eleonora Wegher are also direct performers.
EXTRACT FROM.OPERA
ABCDEFG
BY
Jacopo Mazzonelli
music and live concept Tovel (aka Matteo Franceschini)
artworks and live concept Jacopo Mazzonelli
published score from Casa Ricordi
live electronics Tovel (aka Matteo Franceschini)
performer Jacopo Mazzonelli, Eleonora Wegher
light designer Mariano De Tassis
There are so many derelict upright pianos in the world that no one knows what to do with them anymore. They would end up at piano junkyards if Trentino artist Jacopo Mazzonelli, who in his work has a special relationship with instruments and other music paraphernalia,
would not save them to give them new life by recongenecting them. Seven make upopera ABCDEFG, the letters by which notes are called in English- and German-speaking countries. Each of these pianos seems to have undergone to a great deal of slimming treatment, and shrunk its sides as if it had been crushed from a press, no longer enclosing an entire keyboard, but a single white key, alone. These single-key and single-note instruments enjoy an existence of their own as objects of art, however, if necessary they can resume to playing.
It first happened in 2017, when Mazzonelli asked composer Matteo Franceschini, his fellow countryman, to work with him and the pianos to a performance in Trento's Galleria Civica. Twenty minutes in duration: the first nucleus of what a year later, at the Murate in Florence (for the concert season of Gamo - Open Music Group Today) was reconfigured and extended into The Act of Touch, an hour-long installation/performance in which composers Mazzonelli and Franceschini were protagonists together with pianist Eleonora Wegher, each engaged to his own way in exploring the sonic soul of the seven sculptures also through their electronic manipulation in real time. from then this performance has been repeated a dozen times in various places in Italy: Mazzonelli and Wegher engaged around the pianos; at the electronic console Franceschini, who here, as happens whenever he takes on the role of interpreter of his own music, uses the pseudonym Tovel, named after a lake in Trentino. This time, for this Spoleto revival, The Art of Touch accentuates the site-specific feature, putting to also a new lighting design.
The collaboration between Mazzonelli and Franceschini seems to be directed by the stars, and not just because the two were high school classmates in the mid to late 1990s. The fact is that their research quivers with a similar impatience with the fences between the arts. to Mazzonelli, who has a solid background in music, is interested in pausing in the borderland between visuality and listening, usually, however, stopping before the gesture to to which his "musical" works can be subjected makes them resonant bodies. For, he says, to he is rather interested in triggering those "subtle mechanisms that ferry the viewer from the tactile to the auditory, from the retinal to the poetic, and back again." Of multimedia, music-vision-action, and mixing of genres, cultured research torn from an extra-cultured propensity, is imbued the creative making of Franceschini, who now lives to Paris and teaches in Italy. He, Silver Lion for Music at the 2019 Venice Biennale, has recently managed to to unleash his true nature as an author-performer who unprejudicedly hybridizes academic knowledge (diplomas in clarinet and composition, studies in double bass and piano) with a passion for rock, which he has frequented since his adolescence playing in clubs. "In more recent works, I have come to use together various musical grammars and to reflect on the format of the concert, during which I often put myself on the line to cards by converting the Franceschini author into the Tovel performer," he says.
In The Act of Touch, a crucial work in the expressive maturation of both Mazzonelli and Franceschini, the boundary between sculpture and musical instrument, between natural, amplified and artificial sounds, between theatricality and DJ sets, becomes very fluid. The performers' touch meticulously inspects every part of the piano-objects (seemingly impregnable cathedrals, according to Mazzonelli) and the voices that from these are emitted, whether they are noises or recognizable intonations, the live electronics reshapes them in such a way from that the listener is led to believe that to being felt is a monstrous piano, capable even of transforming itself into the percussive device of a rituality from dance floor. Each act is governed by Franceschini's score (Ricordi editions), of almost classical formal invoice for how symmetrical, weighted it is: a structure that aspires to to a polished sphericity and yet implies acoustic situations in expressive turmoil. The two performers in charge of the pianos must take care of three instruments each. Instead, the single-key F remains the territory of both, an island on which one or the other lands to depending on the moment. The wood of the instruments is stroked, ticked, rubbed, the keys are urged to emit their own note, which comes out deaf, out of tune. Always, the electronics translates these acts into enveloping timbral entities, gradually more explosive, furious, bacchic, pulsing flashes like disco music, which however from last subside, so from inscribe the performance in a circular path. The indications in the score speak clearly: from the "pondering, curious," "suspended," "reflective" start, through an "immaterial" section of a few minutes in which the performers can proceed with a minimum of autonomy while still within a framework established by the composer, the achievement of the impetuous, orgasmic climax is marked as "frenetic," "feverish," "mechanical," after which the discharge of all tension leads to the concluding "crumbling," "remembrance," and "moving away." Of the pianos, not only the mono-keyboard is played, but also the top cover under which sensors are placed. On that wood the performers type the melodic lines prescribed by the score, as if they really had an entire keyboard under their fingers. The sensors sense the magnitude, quality, and speed of each fingertip stroke, capturing it and turning it into a digital signal entrusted to the performer at the console. It is visually striking this mute articulation of phalanges that generates unexpected sonorities, so that it seems that from a hard wooden board can magically blossom psychedelic notes. And poetic is the moment when the two performers find themselves, side by side, to attending to the back of a piano by resting their tuning forks on it: they look like doctors intent on auscultating their lungs.
Franceschini intends The Act of Touch as the first part of a triptych entitled Live, a performance project that always features the composer-Tovel on stage. The other two panels, dated 2019, are Songbook and Opus. The one, for rock quartet, amplified ensemble and live electronics, presented at the Music Biennale, is a work on the song-form. In the other, whose idea dates even to a decade ago, there is to a narrative-dramaturgical interaction between music and visual language, thus between string quartet, electronics, and video projections; presented to La Scala-Paris, it benefits from the collaboration of Ircam and the Parisian design and visual art studio 1024 Architecture.
Matteo Franceschini was born from a family of musicians. He began studying composition with his father, graduating from the "Giuseppe Verdi" Conservatory in Milan under the guidance of Alessandro Solbiati. He specialized at the "Santa Cecilia" National Academy in Rome with Azio Corghi and attended the "Cursus de Composition et d'Informatique Musicale" at Ircam in Paris, the city where he currently lives and works. He receives commissions from institutions such as the La Scala Philharmonic, the Venice Biennale, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Philharmonie de Paris, London's Wigmore Hall, Ircam-Centre Pompidou, the Grand Théâtre de Provence, the Festival Mito, the Orchestre national d'Île-de-France, the Orchestre national de Belgique, theOpera of Saint- Étienne, the Mart, the Milano Musica Festival, the Haydn Orchestra Foundation of Bolzano and Trento, and the Accademia Filarmonica Romana. He creates works for the theater, symphonic, choral and from chamber compositions, soundtracks, performances and interactive multimedia installations. His musical imagery is based on the strength of narrative content and the need to juxtapose languages of different matrix following the rules of contrast and fusion. Research on timbre nourishes his work, which reveals a dreamlike universe and a keen sense of theatricality. He is appointed composer-in-residence at the Arcal in Paris, the Orchestre national d'Île-de-France, the Accademia Filarmonica Romana, and the Haydn Foundation. Silver Lion for Music 2019 to La Biennale di Venezia and "Lauréat" de la Fondation Banque Populaire in 2018, in 2014 he received the "Fedora - Rolf Liebermann Prize for Opera" and in 2011 the title of "Italian Affiliated Fellow in the Arts" from part of the American Academy in Rome. Under the name of TOVEL, Matteo Franceschini deepens the figure of the author/performer in order to experiment with a new sound "from the inside"; the composition, put to in comparison with an instrumental practice, opens new perspectives on the theatrical awareness of the sound gesture. Direct involvement on stage and working to closely with other musicians constitute a true creative act: transforming the score into sound energy. TOVEL elides the boundary between prepared creation (the written page) and invention in the moment of performance, but also shows a desire to abolish the border between performers and spectators. Since 2011 it has been published from Casa Ricordi - Universal Music Publishing.
Jacopo Mazzonelli creates sculptures, installations and performances that investigate the wide border zone between visual arts and music. His research makes use of techniques and methodologies borrowed from different disciplines. Working on the interpretation and visualization of the sound dimension, the artist deals with instruments that he deconstructs, transforms and recomposes. At the center of his interest is the "musical gesture," investigations into the perception of rhythm and the becoming of time. He has held solo exhibitions in Italy and abroad. In 2017, MART - Galleria Civica di Trento dedicated an extensive solo exhibition to him - To be played at maximum volume - accompanied by a monograph to edited by Luigi Fassi and Margherita de Pilati. His works are already in important collections including: AGI-Verona; Caldic Collection, Rotterdam; Unicredit Art Collection; VAF-Stiftung Collection; MART Collection, Rovereto; Fondazione Francesco Fabbri, Treviso. Major exhibitions include: Sonografia, Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica, Bologna (2018); To Be Played at Maximum Volume, Mart - Galleria Civica di Trento (2017); VI Vaf Prize-Posizioni Attuali dell'arte, Schauwerk, Sindelfingen (Stuttgart) and Stadtgalerie, Kiel (2014); La Correzione, with Silvia Giambrone, Paolo Maria Deanesi Gallery, Trento; Difference and Repetition, Galleria Giovanni Bonelli, Milan; Jce Biennal d'Art Contemporain, Le Beffroi, Montrouge, Museu de l'Empordà, Figueres, The Art Building, Vrå, Amadeo De Souza-Cardoso Museum, Amarante; Isorhythm, with Giulio Paolini, Galleria Studio G7, Bologna. In collaboration with composer Matteo Franceschini, since 2017 he has created a dense series of performance projects of which, together with pianist Eleonora Wegher, he is also a direct performer.
Born to Verona, she undertook the study of piano with Laura Palmieri and graduated with honors from the Bonporti Conservatory in Trento under the guidance of Prof. M. R. Corbolini. She perfected with M° L. Margarius and to. Kravtchenko at theImola International Piano Academy "Incontri col Maestro" and later at the Hochschule fur Musik und Theater "F. Mendelssohn" in Leipzig with M° to. Meinel and H. M. Schreiber. Winner since from a very young age of numerous competitions including XXIIIrd Muzio Clementi Piano Competition in Florence, XIth Rome International Piano Competition - Seiler Prize, XIVth Franz Schubert International Competition in Ovada, she has performed - among others - with the Haydn Orchestra of Bolzano and Trento, the Classical Orchestra of Alexandria and the Orchestra from Camera del Teatro La Fenice in Venice. She has participated to Masterclasses given by maestros Vladimir Ashkenazy, Lilya Zilberstein, Joaquin Soriano, Leslie Howard, Menheim Pressler. First Prize at Vila de Capdepera International Piano Competition in Palma de Mallorca and Gaetano Zinetti International Competition in Sanguinetto, Third Prize at Delia Steinberg International Piano Competition in Madrid, and Second Prize at Fausto Zadra International Piano Competition in Abano Terme, has been a guest at major festivals in Italy and abroad, including friday Musica in Pistoia, Steinway Society, Amici della Musica and Società del Quartetto in Verona, Festival Dino Ciani in Venice, Milano PianoCity, European Music Festival in Bologna, Società Filarmonica and Teatro S. Chiara in Trento, Rovereto Philharmonic Hall, Festival Schloss Georgium in Dessau, XIX Leipziger Chopin-Tage in Schneeberg, Festival Seiler in Kitzingen am Main, Festival Martinu in Brno. He collaborates on the musical performances The Act of Touch and Tabulae by Jacopo Mazzonelli and Matteo Franceschini performing for important institutions such as MART - Galleria Civica di Trento; Festival GAMO - Le Murate Pac, Florence; ArtCity Bologna - Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica, Bologna; Galleria Giovanni Bonelli - Milan; Festival Veronarisuona - Giardino Giusti, Verona; Blue Lakes Festival 3.0 - MUSE Museo delle Scienze, Trento, Italy; Ō Tempo di FESTIVAL - Terme di Diocleziano, Rome; AngelicA Festival - Teatro San Leonardo, Bologna; Jeans Music Festival - Palazzo Baronale di Caprarica di Lecce, Italy; Innovasound Festival - Le Centquatre, Paris. from years he collects - together with visual artist and performer Jacopo Mazzonelli - rare musical instruments to keyboard, with which he performs at festivals and concerts. The collection counts - among others - several examples of digitorium, typatune, toy piano and percussion to keyboard.
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