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music > Luciano Chessa: REAL VIRTUALITY. Cori Battenti per Mario Bertoncini (2022)

The 21st Annual SF Electronic Music Festival

September 16, 2022 | 8 PM

THE LAB, 2948 16th Street, San Francisco

 

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Italian artist Luciano Chessa returns to the SF Electronic Music Festival with REAL VIRTUALITY. Cori battenti per Mario Bertoncini (2022), a piece featuring piano, voice, aardvark (a synth designed by Matt [fka Ma++] Ingalls), and a double surround sound projection: a current (and Californian!) surround system (Meyer Sound Quad System) and a purely mechanical surround system Chessa assembled drawing ideas from Venetian Renaissance polyphony, organ construction, and from Mario Bertoncini’s work about spatialization.

“I first met Mario through Ramon Sender (they had been classmates in Rome’s Conservatory when Ramon, at age 18, studied at Santa Cecilia for one full year). I recall it was Ramon who told me about Mario’s love for writing Dialogues—something that immediately piqued my curiosity because that platonic way of presenting arguments–a deliciously outmoded one–had also been adopted by Luigi Russolo in his late writings, which I had just been studying (Al di là della Materia, Dialoghi di Io e l’Anima…). Ramon suggested that I would get in touch with him and naturally I did.

At the time (2009, I believe) I was only familiar with his work with the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza. This was, however, just the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

It would be beyond the scope of this note to write about Mario in a comprehensive way. For the present purpose I’d say: Mario was formidable. He was unquestionably one of a kind as a pianist, composer, writer and musical instrument builder.

In 2013 he was selected by the SFEMF’s Steering Committee to perform at the California Academy of Sciences. While in the end he couldn’t do that due to health reasons, for months and months I spoke with him on the phone practically every day to prepare the performance, something that truly equaled to taking a seminar on Mario’s world.

Tonight’s performance is in no way a reconstruction of Mario’s performances (I doubt such a thing can easily be achieved now that he is gone). But if REAL VIRTUALITY’s main point (to stage a counterpoint between two systems, two technologies and therefore two epochs/histories/cultures, one presenting “la cosa in sé” and the other its simulacrum) is entirely mine, Mario’s spirit still manifests itself in more general, embracing terms. This dialogue of systems is therefore dedicated to the dear Mario Bertoncini and his Dialogues.” – Luciano Chessa

 

LUCIANO CHESSA
Luciano Chessa is a composer, conductor, audiovisual and performance artist, and music historian. His performance of “intensely visual scores” in a concert he curated for NYC’s Roulette last December, has been named “gripping” by The New York Times‘ chief classical music critic Anthony Tommasini. Chessa’s compositions include Cromlech, a large organ piece he premiered in Melbourne’s Town Hall in May 2018 as part of a solo organ recital that received over 2,200 ticket bookings; the opera Cena oltranzista nel castelletto al lago—a work merging experimental theater with reality TV which required from the cast over 55 hours of fasting—and A Heavenly Act, an opera commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, with original video by Kalup Linzy.

 

  • Organizzato da: SFEMF