With great pleasure we invite you to join us for an evening of piano performance by acclaimed Italian composer, performer, scholar, and Audio Foundation International Artist in Residence, Luciano Chessa!
Luciano will perform a suite of works, listed below:
1. ‘TomBoy’ Suite (2009/10) for piano
2. Divagazioni Medianiche 4-6, from a cycle of poems by Carlo Carrà (2015)
3. Inkless Imagination III, for Fedele Azari (2007) for piano
4. Cupric Donna I & II (2016) for piano
5. Le miniere (2003) from “Quadri da una città fantasma” for piano
6. Siciliana, from the Partita for violin (1987/2013), transcription for piano and electronics (2016)
7. Luciano Chessa: Gin e Ginepri, from a poem by Giosuè Carducci (1997) for voice, piano, and electronics
Friday 15 June @ Audio Foundation, doors open 8.00pm
$10 entry
Biography:
Luciano Chessa is a composer, conductor, audiovisual and performance artist. His most recent record, Canti felice, has been released on the Parisian label Skank Bloc Records in Spring 2018. His compositions include Cromlech, a large organ piece that just premiered in Melbourne’s Town Hall 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. Chessa has been commissioned multiple times by the Performa Biennial, and in 2014 he presented three events at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum as part of the exhibition Italian Futurism, 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Universe. Chessa’s work appeared more than once in Artforum, Flash Art, Art in America, and Frieze; and has been featured in the Italian issue of Marie Claire and in the September Issue of Vogue Italia. He has been interviewed twice by the British BBC, and has been the subject of two short documentaries: one produced by RAI World (2014), and the other by Vietnamese State TV VTV1 in the occasion of his first trip to Viet Nam (2015). Chessa is also a music historian specializing in 20th-century Italian and 21st-century American repertoire. He is the author of Luigi Russolo Futurist. Noise, Visual Arts, and the Occult (2012), the first monograph dedicated to Russolo and his “Art of Noise.” In 2009, his Orchestra of Futurist Noise Intoners (OFNI) was hailed by the New York Times as one of the best events in the arts; it continues to tour internationally. With this project he collaborated with the likes of Mike Patton, Lee Ranaldo, Ellen Fullman, Blixa Bargeld, Joan La Barbara, among others. He just completed his residency at the Steel House in Rockland, ME, where he developed the audiovisual installation #00FF00 #FF00FF and prepared the edition of Julius Eastman’s Second Symphony, the world premier of which he will conduct in NYC in the Fall 2018.
Image courtesy of Luciano Chessa. Photo Melesio Núñez