SOUND CONTAINER

Concert-performance for one percussionist and several sounding containers

Creation : Festival Curva Minore (Palermo) 2017

Sound Containers is a one hour concert-performance for one percussionist and different installations of sound containers. The performed repertory includes: an arrangement for spinning and rubbing marbles of a John Cage’s historical piece with half-open notation; Mani Gonxha for Tibetan singing bowls by Pierluigi Billone, where the composer extracts a rich soundscape featuring a variety of impacts, timbres, resonances and harmonics which nobody would imagine could be produced by a single source: the bowls are an extension of the hands, they become part of the performer, as if the performer himself becomes part of the resonating body, the slightest contact between various materials – metal, skin, bones, torso, and voice – multiplies and propagates the sound through the performing body and outward; one solo for ethnic percussion ad libitum (here an Udu Drum, a clay pot) based on the well-known Exotica by Mauricio Kagel; one piece by Michael Maierhof where the instrument must be preaviously created by the interpreter and it’s composed by three guitar strings of nylon and three stiff plastic glasses which act as resonators; since the plastic glasses with the nylon strings begin to operate as strongly directional sound producers towards the room, the interpreter perform different movements on the glasses, creating a new spatial sound component; a solo piece for drum by the young Dan Van Hassel where a custom hardware setup transform the snare drum into its own self-contained speaker and triggering system: there aren’t separate speakers and electronic sounds resonate though the drum; finally the Libro Celibe realized by Giorgio Battistelli and inspired by the Duchamp’s Bachelor Machines, here in a new creation by the wood artist Giuseppe Bussi.