music@villaromana

Villa Romana e.V., Florence, Italy

 

The eighth edition of music@villaromana entitled Imaginary Bridges brings together apparently distant “languages”: classic contemporary and non-contemporary music, electronics, improvisation, fine art and oral narration. The centerpiece is the new pocket opera by the Norwegian composer Øyvind Torvund. This year he is Composer in Residence and will live and work at Villa Romana in the months before the festival to develop his composition and adapt to the villa’s spatial specificities inside and out. His pocket opera is inspired by the dada and futuristic tradition and, at the same time, makes reference to the latest tendencies of noise music and elements of black metal. The new work will be performed by the Asamisimasa Ensemble and the vocal ensemble Zero Vocal.

The first programmatic counterpoint to this is an homage to György Kurtág. The project Lettere Intime by the Zurria-Dillon-Torquati trio attempts to trace a path into his poetic world by shedding light on his life and work in a variety of ways. On the occasion of Kurtàg’s 90th birthday six composers related to Kurtàg also wrote special works for this: Peter Eötvös, Lászlá Sáry, Howard Skempton, Lukas Ligeti, Peter Aiblinger and Toshio Hosokawa.

Forming the second counterpoint are the chamber concerts of the Asamisimasa and Zero Vocal ensembles. These will perform pieces like Allegro sostenuto by Helmut Lachenmann and Cries of London by Luciano Berio, as well as the latest works by Laurence Crane and Simon Løffler for Asamisimasa plus two new vocal pieces by Lorenzo Pagliei and Claudio Ambrosini. Furthermore, the French poet and artist Anne-James Chaton will unite improvisation elements and electronic sounds with the sounds of the pure voice under the heading Pop is dead.

 

September 22–24, 2017

Villa Romana, Florence

 

Further Information
www.villaromana.org