PERFORMANCES

First Sonata for piano (1992)
Nodi for flutes and piano (1992)
Mai più spera for flute, violin and percussions (1992)
E’ sempre stato qui for flute, guitar and piano (1992)
Preludio for "prepared" guitar (1992) 
Preghiera for flute and percussions (1992)
Della passione e del dolore for guitar and piano (1992)
Strumenti, sentimenti for two violins (1992) 
Altre decisioni for flute, violin, piano and percussions (1993)
Second Sonata for piano (1993)
Mirabile for silent musician (1993) play 
Fantasia for violin (1993)
Fragment for flute (1993)
Tamburo for small drum (1993)
Sonata for violin (1993)
Adagio for strings (1993)
Una grande musica for string instrument (1993)
Fifth Piano Sonata musichoreography (1994)
Ad infinitum for string instrument (1994)
Umbilíco-Navel composizione oggettuale n.1 (1996)
Berescith body transcription (1997) 
Blossoms-Germogli musicoreografia con voci e strumenti (2003) play I play II
Novelletta by Sylvano Bussotti (2003) 
Estudio para niños for kids choir (2005) play
Cadenza birdsong (2007) play
John Cage Tribute (4'33'', Aria, Variations, lecture) (2007) play
So Dense studio per un video-clip (2011)
17: Angelo Capovolto (2012) play
Catalogo delle pietre for piano (2013/16)
Cattivi Pensieri for solo voice (2014) 
Extracción/Transmutación for computer processed piano (2018) play
Angel upside down for prepared piano, sound objects and percussions (2019) play 
Storie di suoni e speranza per distrarre il mondo, piano performance (2022) play 


Before a musician starts playing on his instrument
there is a world of silence and mystery made up of movements.
Among the sounds, during the rests 
there is a rich universe of silent gestures and signs 
which is the complementary part of any musical performance. 
Body movements are part of the music, 
make the music possible to be heard. 
By means of such reflections I began to be interested in choreography 
as so much linked to composition. 
That's why some of my music scores involve the whole body of the musician 
as well as why my dance works focus on the sounds 
caused by the movements of the performer. 


STORIE DI SUONI E SPERANZA PER DISTRARRE IL MONDO
Stories of sounds and hope to distract the world

Angelo Sturiale, piano









Undici scene ed abiti e caratteri e costumi tra le dita e mani di

un pianista stregone, un pagliaccio o un santone, un musicista

stanco di suonare tasti e note tra spartiti e scale e arpeggi, tra

virtuosismi usurati negli anni, emulazioni di ben altri percorsi

tra le trame della storia, e le vicissitudini e tribolazioni di una

vita problematica anche se piena di suono e musica, di fantasia,

di teorico rigore e tecnica, di abnegazione negli anni più floridi 

e vividi da una prolungata giovinezza, di una incredibile carriera 

ad inghiottire note ed ore di pratica e sudore. Ma adesso, esausto

ed appagato da sperimentazioni senza risparmi o cesure, senza

cedimenti o concessioni a facili o rassicuranti melodie, è così che

si dona attraverso il corpo e tra le mani imbastite di entusiasmo e

riflessione, travestendo il gesto ampio e teatrale, fisiologico nelle

dita e nella mano fino all’avambraccio, si dona aprendosi al 

percorso senza sospetto e sosta in cui a far scena sono tessuti e

anelli, bracciali come cinture, ciuffi e capelli come testimoni di

grandezza tra le piccole manifatture di stoffe e immaginazione

per ricreare in testa e tra gli interstizi della propria fanciullezza 

un teatro del silenzio e del pensiero per delineare spazio e tempo,

storie di suoni e speranza per distrarre il mondo da caos e orrore,

da problemi e pesi di psiche e tormenti, da obbligate attestazioni

di sconfitte e disfatte. E allora i tasti sonori e colorati calpestati da 

passi dolcissimi o maldestri, imbavagliati da scarpine e bracciali,

e le mani immerse nel cotone e velluto incastonato tra allegri e

scanzonati meccanismi, corteggiano pubblico ed orecchie, fanno

festa ai draghi e ai pulcini, accarezzano leoni e criceti. E’ stato

impossibile però corteggiare l’anima tra le righe della terra, violare

il cancello di filigrana ed estro che ha aiutato a disfare le mie

certezze e scardinare le catene tra le fonti e i libri, tra i capelli e

le viscere di così tanti suoni implosi tra i colori senza più tono

degli abissi che hanno parlato per te, che hanno implorato già da

troppo tempo la fenomenologia di questo teatrino scomposto ma

sincero con l’universo intero. La guerra è qui tra noi che incombe 

e esplode tra le trame quotidiane e gli infanti che si spingono da

sempre senza riguardo e rispetto del sole che acceca ogni nostra

utopia. Quattro dita al posto di dieci a rappresentare il mondo e

la sua micromusica che fin dalle prime ottave di questi ottantotto

tasti pretende di dare anima al suono del mondo, di silenziare 

ogni rappresaglia o conflitto ai confini dei tramonti, di distrarre da

lutti e neri, ridisegnando in alto paradigmi e concetti tra i sogni

dei bimbi a festa e della loro energia avvolta da allegria e innocenza. 







EXTRACCIÓN/TRANSMUTACIÓN
for computer processed piano

Angelo Sturiale, piano
Miguel Moreno, live electronics



Conceiving the piano as a symbolic bridge to new panoramas and sound paradigms. Re-interpreting its traditional timbre as a questionable transition between its natural acoustics and its new dress that gives new senses to the hungry and restless listener, and with them new grammars and aesthetics, new ways of rethinking the same piano technique and compositional language or style. 

Based on the creative programming of algorithms aimed at conversing conceptually and in parallel with the conventional timbre configuration of the instrument, the goal is to re-design and re-program the 88 piano keys in such a way that the final sound result of the entire performance can refer to ideas and experiences related to the concepts of limit and void, surprise and dream, imagination and illusion. 

As with a disguise, the natural acoustic body of the instrument, covered electronically and digitally with new fabrics and luminous colors, will continue to exist and sound in parallel as a necessary shadow, to help the listener to reconstruct in his imagination and memory the idea of his archetypal skeleton, of his original skin, of his ancient movements and consumed articulations in space and time recognised three centuries ago. 

Therefore, the performance will have as some of its objectives, to awaken doubts and tactile and sensorial questions, to establish imaginative analogies between past and future, between spaces of heard and unheard sounds. And to extract cells from the known in order to transmute them into the unknown, to new worlds of sonorous and musical meanings: an experience of adventure or journey especially given to solitary, curious, rebellious and naturally dissatisfied listeners.


CATALOGO DELLE PIETRE 
for piano



Stones, boulders and stones of all shapes, colours and sizes. Few or many, in imaginative combinations but uninterrupted and never repetitive in vision and musical sequence that see them as protagonists of a virtuosistic and very brilliant piano performance, are presented in the form of a powerful sound catalog, but coming from a visual imagination certainly evocative and dreamlike disturbing, but very systematic. Falling in a series (without a break or a truce) from an ideal volcano - a metaphor for creative talent and infinitely rich and articulated - the stones complete an obligatory path: only descents and slopes, groups of notes that unfold an impressive amount of sound scenes and mental drawings to be listened to in one breath. Piano techniques of all kinds fit together and follow one another, anxious and hasty, incomplete. Vital, exaggerated, instinctive, but ordered in their attempt to surprise and envelop the listener/spectator in a dense and stratified sound magma. Stone-drums, stone-blades, boulders-floats. Mature sounds and aware in their musical unfolding, but immature in the materials, poor and essential in the melodic constitutions, complex and articulated in the sequences, in the chordal and syntactic combinations. A sound journey, but with obligatory visual references, even if subjective and very personal in the mental elaborations of those who enjoy the work.


ANGEL UPSIDE DOWN
for prepared piano, sound objects and percussions



An imaginary sound journey thinking back to an articulated, difficult and painful path that an Angel, from the top of a black but passionate sky, accomplishes alone and abandoned to his own destiny and freedom. His wounded wings and body fragments accompany him and are torn apart through the many crazy flights, broken by life's jolts and dying feelings of power's will.

SO DENSE! 
study for a videoclip


Some shots from the backstage of the videoproduction SO DENSE, recorded in May 2011 in Monterrey (Mexico) in the Auditorio Luís Elizondo.


BROKEN
for piano trio
OMI, International Musicians Residency, Ghent, N.Y.
Roulette, New York

It is a "broken music", sonidos quebrados, rotos, descompuestos: bottles that simulate other concrete, symbolic, metaphorical breaks. Fast notes, fragments of structures, splinters that chase and disassociate each other. A discontinuous line between the instrumental parts, which only mean instinct and escapes.
"Broken" is all a kind of aesthetics, a way of living, a locura (craziness). Quick hands in and between the piano, but also above the other instruments. Touching and touches between the skins of the other "integrantes". And again fragments of glasses and bottles that accompany everything else, in the silence of the flow of us.

NEW YORK BROKEN DUOs-TRIO version (USA)

Angelo Sturiale, piano 
James llgenfritz, contrabass and electric bass
Cory Hills, drums and percussions

play Roulette version
play part I play part II play part III



MONTERREY BROKEN DUO version (México)

Angelo Sturiale, piano 
Carlos López, drums

play I part play II part


XIII. SINFONIA MUSICALE 

from “SINFONIA” by Antonio Pizzuto (1966)


Dolce e lieve, qual consonanza di quinta, già si destavano sincrone le luci serali nei due penduli globi lattei trasverso via. Di bottega in bottega era apparecchiata chiusura, il berettaio calando la sua bizzarra mostra, simile a azzeruoli, dall’alta soglia col rebbio, altri altro. Ormai al Ciptadin villanzonzolo, negli emporietti saturi di cotoname e paracqua per inurbanti, dedaleo calettare chiudende, asse dopo asse, con l’ultima come faranno mai, ovunque magro bottino. Unico ad asserragliarsi da dentro, fra tante rustiche mercerie, l’antico negozio di filati in oro argento rame – fino, mezzofino, falso – avente finitimi ricevitoria e spettrali armadi notarili. Protratti al limite con fatiche dantesche eterni battenti, appostevi quattro spranghe, dieci mandate di serrame, era niente questo appetto i puntelli, gemini secolari cipressi. Altro non celluloidi, grimaldelli contro la toppa che puerile titillo; per modellarla, buona libbra di cera mal dissipata. Il cannone solo in possanza, sì, ma dove postarlo, anche pezzi piccoli, strada ristretta, neppure a bruciapelo: che se, dal rinculamento nulla si salverebbe delle vetrine avversarie; né mortai o bombarde, esiguo lo spazio per un tiro indiretto. Dunque al sicuro, inviolabile cassaforte. Viandante scorgendoli, padrone e fattorino, restare poi dietro tal barriera, può darsi che ne facesse, conforme indole, puri asceti, scolte a bivacco, rocàmboli, clucluclàn, spie, filosofali, calandrini. Era poi modesto il commisurato intrinseco, scarsa riserva metallica entro minimo ovale truciolo (sotto drappicelli), pepite numerabili onde le garrule fogliette procopte dal battiloro, argento di coppella un chilo più o meno a sparte, sovresso la scacchiera profonda, tutta diaframmi ove per metodiche sorti invogli farmaceutici con pupillosi lustrini. Or fatta arce era data opera a assesti vespertini, agguagliando qui l’architettura degli umili sovrapposti cassetti, ivi scompartite, giusta colore con suoi digradamenti, matassine sericee, là dirimpetto allineare seggiole contro muro, le pratiche successive lungo bancone, rimuoverne superfluità, vi restasse in angolo bilancina minuscola, ben ripostivi nel ricettacolo sottostante i pesi pigmei, e null’altro che il mulinello strepente dalla cui cocca, per manate instancabili, si attorceva gran vergola tuttodì. Le labbra dominiche frattanto, che buon falsetto, offrivano il tema delle Norne, o qualch’altro, al fesso orecchiuto. Stogliere di vista il consunto metro ottonino e le forbici, penzoloni dal lor guinzaglio, esprimeva arcana liberalità. Era capovolta sull’altra a rime baciate esile scranna materna, raro ormai soggetta, per acciacchi anni cure domestiche, peraltro non del tutto infrequente, poi richiusa ogni qual vetrina e bacheca sugli innumerevoli aurei rocchetti schierativi, l’esposizione attata, merletti frange passamani, lunghesso il terminativo recinto là da parete. Per varco intimo che una cortina rossiccia nascondeva, eccoli passare, spente luci, in retrobottega, salirne i tre scalini, sotto debolissima lampada percorrere tenebroso andito fra ereticali cavalletti da trafilarvi, raggiungere angusto aperto dove forgia incappata, strenuo suo mantice che rendeva tacchina fragile alambicco, trattolo allora con tenaglia correvano a versar nella forma l’incandescente massello, digrossarvi già, farsi verga, e vestita oro omai imprendere infinito viaggio, attraverso mille rubini foggiarne inesausto biondo capello filiera per filiera indi, entro lo scavo profondo, ruota dopo ruota, finché sostanza di piviali pianete labari onori dicate. Da perpetuo spillo, in ricolma vaschetta sperso monotono borboglio. Poco oltre, per manco passaggino raggiunto inchinandosi, erano a pie’ della scala, contro verde portone sempre in ricaccia da molla, governato d’insù con illiberale fune, solitario sulla viuzza traversa. Il buon novello partiva. Infine le ore domestiche, sua madre così piccola, scarna, artefice di quel commercio or assunto da lui con disciplinata rinuncia a studi prediletti, già stando per dottorarsi, e ancora le recava guadagni, tutto, fuori che male nuove. E datole un salutino, i due passi, dopo la faticosa giornata, svelto, canticchiante motivi suoi, il largo spiegato in Eulenspiegel, ariette di Pergolesi Caldara, alcuna melodia fraterna. Centellava un vermut, unico lusso, nella celebre pasticceria, solingo fra i molti, troppi direi, attrattivi per l’usanza di poi recarsi alla cassa e dire pago tot, prezzo o apprezzamento che fosse, onde ahimé già in itinere il curatore. Cenavano soli soli, quieta la casa ancora poco fa diurna subuglio, da asciolvere fin dopo pranzo, allorché due figlie maritate, con medico una, a legale altra, e proli, vi convenivano truppa, freschi i rispettivi fornelli, via vai continuo, vispi scampanellari, refettorio perpetua mensa, ovunque girandolanti, poi instauratosi fulgido bagno attrarvele in maiolica nana fondamentale zampillo, quanto curiose mai di tal refrigerio, sibi atque aliis. E figliolanze a trivio o quadrivio, col Georges i forensi, da sette anni il piano la medicea, ormai esperta, invero unico pezzo, eseguirne benino m.s., sei tr., maluccio alcuni sf. qualche ped., costargli, diceva babbo, quel Notturno un milione. Da inopinabili sedi l’esile vecchierella portava ghiotto merluzzino protettogli (pazienza vi discopre una pupillina), egli a lei prammatiche imaginette, proventi, breviloquiali messaggi d’insaldate madri badesse. Indugioso a sedano diplomatico, strizzar limone, sospendere forchettatine per glosse o dimenticanze utili, si sorridevano intanto, rispettandone ella con timida prudenza la svogliatezza di stanco, tal repressa ansietà suo figlio. Quell’altro, parecchi assai anni più attempatetto, era ognora appartato in farraginosa camera, onde a folate stormiva da mandolino una pur sommessa balbuzie, altrui inintelligibili melodie stupende, saggiantele sol così via via l’artista incapace i numeri o migliore strumento. Atti e detti manifestavano si considerasse vantabile a privilegio. L’opera. Comporla sconoscitore di ritmi notazione leggi. Viverne il sogno fin dalla giovinezza: bastevoli allora le domeniche per gli obblighi militari dei primogeniti orfani, adempiervi egli, in chipì farancina e modulazioni sublimi, accompagnato da famula a piazza d’armi, qui atteso fuori barre. Passo, esclamava quel birbante stordendolo. Che richiami vani, realtà infime, il lungo fucile retto come torcia, i pensieri altrove. Poi affannarsi per viali, intorno alla vasca, non quasi ricercasse un ricordo caro smarrito, avantindietro fra cesali di bosso, cedri araucarie lilla cigni, su ruminante ghiaia; e le notti insonni, mai sempre coi lumi accesi, vittoria. Avido attendere il maestro, dettargli, lentissima la trascrizione, costosi quei girini comunque retribuiti, per ore o a biscrome, appena pur salvi nello scrigno repente insorgere, tarlo, ancora scontento. No. Tutto da rifare, dissolto lo stentato abbozzo. Presto o tardi dopo litigi divorzio. Subentrava altro interprete, differente stesura, esse non avendo in comune che il disintenderlo, attribuirgli altrui modi secondo capacità e gusti, or la mano di Debussy, talvolta Massenet, quando Mercadante. Una cassa di pentagrammi, forsanche non dispersi, ove possibile ritrovare qualcosa. Sopraggiungevano ristrettezze, vecchiaia, eventi, verrà tempo. Frattanto c’era da lavorare al libretto, mutarvi nomi in elaborati ipocorismi, Passia. Puscia. Piscia. La madre, ottuagenaria, veniva col buon caffè, lui bocconi, un polpaccio glabro scoperto, entrovi trasparenti coralli azzurri.

Copyright © 1966 by Lerici Editrice, Milano




J O H N   C A G E tribute
Variations II (1961)

Every kind of performer with every kind of instruments prepares a set of sound objects decontextualised by their use and origin, playing with them curious as much a musician!
Let us concentrate then - closing our eyes - on the composition of just sounds with "new" pauses and durations treated as score notes that become renewed space and time, through the most common compositional materials in a different articulation and geometry of senses and harmonies.



ARIA (1958)


In 5 languages a flower composition of words and phrases linked together by a network of melodic, timbric, linguistic-phonetic multisenses, by new vocal grammars. "Air" as a work without synopsis, interpreted - joyful and decadent - by a capricious and melancholic star. A celebration of the freedom of the sound gesture and the desire for irrational singing within us.


2nd autoku - LECTURE from “Time”


An antilecture, fantasy and anti-academy for a university lecture. 
A paragraph, initially with intelligible content and syntax, is subjected to decompositions and recompositions with the aim of restoring life and other senses through the most unpredictable linguistic combinations.
The durations of the reading, the pauses, the paragraphs, the transitions, the choice of the colors and the backgrounds, the vocal timbres, the volumes and dynamics, and still the accents, the density and rarefaction of the compositional structures are all entrusted to randomised combinatorial mechanisms,  aiming to enrich the modalities of reading of a text and with it, among it, its innumerable meanings.


4’33’’ (1952)



4 minutes and 33 seconds during which a performer of any instrument interprets the apparent silence around him.
The spectators, culturally accustomed to waiting for the sounds written and playable by the score, are surprised by the expectations betrayed: not pre-packaged and repeatable music, but that one coming from inside and outside the room itself, from its sounds and moods, embarrassments and unpredictability of the listeners themselves. There is music in all things, if only we are ready to redefine the center of our listening and our concepts.
In my interpretation of a "classic" of contemporary music literature, I simply wanted to emphasize the Japanese symbolic element intrinsic, in my opinion, in the genesis and aesthetics of Cage's work. Why not an idealistic Japanese musician playing 4'33''? 


NOVELLETTA by Sylvano Bussotti (1973)

A tribute to a master and a conflict, 
to an attraction, a strange fear, 
to a thank you and an adieu.





CADENZA 
birdsong


A musical study-game, a compositional exercise, in which they are assembled together, decontextualized and re-composed micro-fragments of songs of birds of various species, an ideal cadence in which to improvise is only it precisely, authentic and supreme virtuoso of the skies: there 's no better flutist than a bird! The complex melodic and rhythmic structures, microtonal, irregular, surprising, intimately dramatic or frighteningly joyful, want to transmit through this short and funny fragment of music, a poetic and light provocation to instrumentalists and musicians lacking imagination and creativity. It is not necessary to bother easy and arbitrary exoticisms or pan-tonal temptations to rediscover the beauty of "natural sounds": it is enough to observe and listen to the complex and fascinating acoustic world that our flying brothers are able to transmit!


EXPERIMENTAL WORKSHOP OF MUSICOREOGRAPHY 
Produced by Majazé, Italy 



Only a few will be able to enjoy this bitter fruit without danger.
Therefore, oh shy soul, before advancing further, in such unexplored lands,
listen well to what I say: turn your heels back and not forward...

Lautréamont, Maldoror


The workshop aims at the determination of a concrete psychophysical space, where to siphon, through euphoric negations and exhilarating forcing, the "historical" body of dancers, musicians and actors, denuding it from tired and unproductive sedimentations of empty automatisms and expressive mechanicisms, from agonizing theorists, from inactual commonplaces, from losing aesthetics, from worn out and standardized academicisms.
An irrational journey towards the hidden musicality present in any "unique" body of the participant in the workshop, an encounter/clash between dynamics and musical and choreographic compositional structures. 


Experimental Musicoreography is a method of improvisation and composition in real time that involves not only the sphere of consciousness and musical organization of the performers, but also their physical bodies, thus conceived as containers and inspirers of creative sound actions, harmoniously dialoguing with the musical language itself.



ESTUDIO PARA NIÑOS, for kids choir

Niños Cantores de Morelia, México
produced by UNESCO-ASCHBERG, France





BLOSSOMS-GERMOGLI, musicoreography
for voices and instruments
produced by Festival Curva Minore
I Candelai, Palermo

play I part play II part




KINONIKON
Cappella Bonajuto, Catania
produced by IMAIE, Roma, Italy


KINONIKON is the result of the collaboration between the composer Angelo Sturiale, the performer Daniela Orlando and the dance company SAT Caputo-Senica and avails itself of the contribution of the IMAIE of Rome (Institute for the protection of the rights of Italian Artists, Interpreters and Performers).
In KINONIKON the scenic codes (voice, movement, sound, light, space, icon, etc.) are articulated to activate organically an open system of aesthetic-formal relations.
The performance is composed of different moments in which the 4 performers will interact with each other in a symbolic "song of communion" (Kinonikon), free from philological links with the Byzantine musical tradition but certainly influenced by it in the formal conception of the scenic action, designed specifically for the particular architectural structure of the Bonajuto Chapel (VI-VII sec.) in Catania, Sicily. 


FOOTPRINTS 
for 4 wood or brass instruments


The performance has been written for and premiered by London Chamber group in 2000 in the British Library. It consists of a set of instructions which allow four clarinets to react to people, in streets, open-air markets, airports, and so on.
People walking do not look at their own footprints accidentally left on the ground. The music has the task of reminding them of their steps and footprints. The musicians are observers of how people behave when walking, transforming information on people¹s walking into a performance.
Like many other compositions by the composer, the piece focuses on the idea of unity of the music with the environment, so that music produced by the players is the result of feedback between them and the unpredictable expression of the sounds of things and living beings around the players.


OPERA 1-3 
Two little studies for an actor, musician or dancer

Alessandro Mazzeo, performer


Disciplining the gaze of a performer who reads a score or any other text, even an image. The eyes move from one side of the score sheet to the other, the movements, the durations, the intensities constitute musical material. Yes: no acoustic sound, if anything it is the rhythm of the eye movements that dictates the compositional structure (study 1). And (study 3) also the nasal and buccal respiration taken into consideration to organize a musical phrase. Giving it sound, expression. Why not make breathing cycles (apparently unconscious in everyday life) earthly to structure meters and rhythms?
In studio 1 (eyes) and studio 3 (breaths) are possible cases of meta-music? But what does it mean? Well, it means that I read and make of my reading a silent reflection whose goal will be to compose: eye movements in studio 1, breaths in studio 3.
An actor or dancer could benefit from it, hence the opening of the work to these figures. As if to say:

Studio 3: "Hey, actor: but you work with breaths, don't you?
Answer: "Well, yes. But..."
Studio 3: "But... what? Learn to control and structure your breathing, even play with it and then abandon it and throw it to the nettles with the aim to free yourself and then apply the reflections that come out of this experience in what you will do next in your work as an actor.

And to a dancer:

Studio 1: "Hey, dancer..."
Answer: "Yes...?"
Studio 1: "Why not make your eyes dance? Why not adjust and calibrate the movements of your pupils to make it a dance, with rhythms and dynamics that are familiar to you? Why only legs and arms and nothing else? Why exclude the eye, the supreme organ of sight, from the organization of choreographic materials?"



OPERA 1 
for singing dancer or dancing singer
- con la notazione per parametri in verticale -

Opera 1 has been conceived and written for "singing dancer" or "dancing singer", whose use of body and voice constitute a homogeneous performative entity. The voice was not designed to "accompany" the dance or vice versa. The compositional organization of this score is achieved through an indissoluble dialectic between the body and vocal parameters in their dialogic globality, which is why it is impossible to separate the sequences of sound / movement of the singing from those of the body.
In Opera 1 the executive actions are therefore never defined "a priori", but are determined in the moment in which they are conceived and formed by and with the "subjective" body of its performer, and then directed according to creative processes as much as they coincide with its natural physical individuality and emotional tension. 
Opera 1 is part of a wider composition project designed for any type and number of dancer-musicians-performer, and especially for "new" figures of performers, such as physically disabled ones; in short, all those who have been subject to more or less direct discrimination for their physical-motor constitutions considered culturally "unsuitable" for the production of artistic interpretations. 
In the conception and composition of Opera 1, I have therefore imposed myself a fundamental aesthetic line: the identification of universal "extra-cultural" parameters, that is, a scheme of elements of the vocal-gestural   performance of a singer dancer. In this way I have come to draw up a table of these essential performance parameters, through which the control of the vocal-body expressivity of the performer can be achieved, even though it does not determine a single sound in its acoustic objectivity and a single movement in its figurative/visual reality. 
The vocal parameters take into consideration: the duration of the sound event, the relative pitch, the dynamics or intensity, the vocal articulation through the opening of the lips and the oral cavity, the minor or major involvement of the vocal cords, the density of intervals used for the same sentence, the different shades of timbre and expression. 
The body parameters, on the other hand, take into consideration the duration of the choreographic event, its lower or higher speed, the lower or higher quantity of body parts involved, the levels of fragmentation and unity between body parts, the homogeneity and inhomogeneity of the movement, the lower or higher muscular tension, the conditions of balance or imbalance between one or more body parts, the general psycho-physical direction of movement of one or more parts of the body forward or backward, up or down, right or left with respect to a point x, the closing or opening of movements from the body to space, the choice of the executive radius of action, the minor or major adherence to the "roots" (force of gravity) of one or more parts of the body. 

                      

The compositional-executive parameters of this notation do not refer to a predefined minimum and maximum scale: that is, there are no parametric values objectively determined and therefore reachable by the performer on the basis of preliminary exercises. The scales are exclusively subjective, they correspond to a minimum and maximum sense and executive act within the personal psycho-physical corporeity of the performer. It is not so much the "horizontal" scalar subtleties that are the object of the compositional-executive organization, but the "vertical" articulation of the totality of the parameters. 
In Opera 1, as in other works of mine, there is the conception of the evocative character of the symbol, in its capacity to suggest on the one hand possible interpretative-executive behaviours that are unexpected, unpredictable (invisible to the composer himself, as well as to the performer, of course), and on the other hand to become a container of the most disparate improvisational experiences; in other words, as if the symbol itself were capable or potentially always open to enclose any type of movement. 
But what strongly distinguishes the grammatical and aesthetic identity of the work is the fact that the body is no longer thought of as a set of detached parts, like an organism formed of head, arms, legs, feet, trunk, etc.. 
The choreographic conception that sees the body of the dancer formed by its individual parts is non-existent, since this system of notation and choreographic composition imposes a psychological conception of the body, that is, a body conceived and experienced as an organism with forces located in different points: the performer can think of himself as formed by blocks or energy fields corresponding, for example, only to the head-shoulders (first block) and leg-feet (second block) or also right side (first block) and left side (second block), or even as right hand (first block) and the rest of the body (second block). 
The body therefore does not walk or move in space with only its feet: it can also do so with the head or with any other part of it, for example with the left forearm or with the pelvis, etc.. Walking with the head means moving the tension and the psychological strength (and partly the properly muscular one), from the feet to the head, succeeding in transmitting this passage and overturning of position to those who see or "feel" the body of the performer. The body should not have, or better should have less and less (and less and less should be thought of consciously) hierarchies of use of its parts.
All this means turning to a more conscious naturalness of the body, less biological or physiological; it means therefore constantly changing, through observation and experience, the points of view, the psychological and emotional approach with one's own.




JEWDANCE - BERESCITH 
body transcriptions from the Torah 
dedicated to Wendell Wells


Transcribing from the original Hebrew text can mean several things: it is not simply an attempt to ennoble the text more than the tradition to which it belongs has done: it can be an attempt to go against the text itself, an attempt to make violence against the text, an attempt to force and de-contextualize it, a rather alternative use.




1 Alef head 
2 Bet-vet eyes 
3 Ghimel nose mouth 
4 Dalet right shoulder 
5 He left shoulder 
6 Vav right arm 
7 Zayin chest 
8 Het left arm 
9 Tet right forearm 
10 Yod belly 
11 Kaf left forearm 
12 Lamed right hand (second half) 
13 Mem right hand (first half) 
14 Nun basin 
15 Samekh left hand (first half)
16 Nayin left hand (second half) 
17 Pe-fe right thigh 
18 Zadik left thigh 
19 Kof right leg 
20 Resh left leg 
21 Shin-sin right foot 
22 Tav left foot

In the composition of "Berescith" (Genesis) I thought of applying my notation system of the body movement (Creative Kinetography, see "Mirabile" below), increasing and improving it, to the structure of Biblical Hebrew, so as to derive the compositional structure precisely from the order in which the letters are arranged to give voice to a word, which will then necessarily be linked to another, to form a sentence, a verse, even an entire book.
From the impossibility of accepting the particularity of any poetic text, however strong or valid it may be, arises the need to entrust oneself totally to the Text par excellence, that is, to the Sacred Scriptures. The reasons that lead me to dedicate myself to this project from now on are the logical and coherent consequence of my human and artistic path, whose fundamental principles are: the almost disappearance of typically musical acoustics when I think of music, therefore a loss of music, but not of musicality or of the musical work; an increasingly strong and necessary need to free myself from the idea of an art independent from life, and therefore from a world of relationships with one's own existence (and that of one's own culture) in general; and obviously an increasingly strong and necessary relationship with Jewish spirituality. With the questions and suspensions that it has left and continues to leave.
The words of the verses of a book like "Berescith" can thus also be expressed through the body, whose silent movement can only be a metaphor for the silence of the Scripture. The meaning of words, therefore, is not to be found exclusively in its content, but in the attempt to reveal, through interpretation, the interpretations that the Jewish tradition for centuries has accumulated and never exhausted in relation to the Scripture.
The structure of the words of the Hebrew Text, therefore, dictates the framework, the "genesis", the form of the composition. From the ideal and aesthetic need to no longer want to be considered an author of an artistic work, I believed "natural" and consistent, according to the path of my existential and artistic research, "disappear" within the text, proposing myself as one of many traditional "interpreters", "readers" of the words and phrases contained in it, to seek other riches, magic, current with the (my) contemporaneity. That's why, instead of wanting to adhere to modernism and the search for a fictitious originality, the desire to implement a path backwards, with the Tradition, but the authentic one, mysterious, not the rhetoric, the nostalgic or conservatory. 
To confront oneself with Tradition means to confront oneself with the Text, to read. Reading in the Text, to find or perhaps find for the first time, signs, indications, answers, semantic (and not) paths for oneself and for others. 
Moreover, the possibility of making deeper, hidden levels of reading (gematry, numerology, etymology) allows the performer (composer) and the dancer to cover and complete the interpretation of the techniques of execution with important indications of an emotional, stylistic, poetic and aesthetic nature. The more or less literal and metaphorical meaning attributed to words allows the composer and the dancer to express themselves in a wide variety of ways. 
And so to transfer the fascinating Jewish principle of idolatry into the compositional conception, updating it in modern times through the negation of the acoustic determination of sound, thinking therefore of the body that moves in silence, without music, evoking if anything an inner music with silent sounds, imaginable by every single spectator in a subjective way. By doing this, I naturally connected myself to the historical, and for me today radical, negation of the memory of the image, because the composition and memorisation of the composition in which the body is the only instrument of the performer would have happened through the dialectical mediation of the writing, therefore through a score, as for the music, and not only through the observation and memorisation of the movements of one's own body. 
The idea that the Scripture regulates the composition and choreographic execution has been for me a source of richness, which has questioned some aspects of my previous way of thinking and composing music. What are the boundaries between a sound and a movement that produces it? Just as a classical sonata can be interpreted in various ways thanks to a text, why not transfer this potentiality also to what can be thought of and performed with the body? Writing has always provided and still provides important elements of reflection for a composition, and renewed ways of performing a form, among different artists and eras. 
I then found it natural to apply my notation system to the Hebrew alphabet, to Biblical Hebrew, in the sense that I found surprising similarities between the aesthetic principles of my body notation and the strength of  Jewish scripture. That is why it was natural for me to derive the formal structure of the composition from the very linguistic structure of the words in the original language of the Old Testament. 
The idea of generating a sequence of movements from human elements of reflection, always current, and from how these reflections were expressed linguistically, has enriched me enormously. And it has greatly enriched my idea of art, and its function in my life and in society. I therefore find the Hebrew language of the Scriptures an original, inexhaustible source of inspiration for compositional organization in all senses, because its particular magic, mysterious structure, allows us to obtain indications, decisive suggestions for the choice of the most varied compositional parameters of each part of the body, and thus the organization of their order, repetitions, variations, positions, amplitudes, muscle tensions, the space within which the body moves, the possible paths, the speeds of movement. And also indications on scenes and costumes, if you decide to create theatrical versions. 
The different readings and comments of the same verse (literal, cabbalistic, etc.) enrich above all the way of creating and performing the sequences of movements, because the different meaning that can be attributed to the words, is naturally transferred also in the conception and execution of the movements of the body, thus producing different ways of thinking emotionally (and aesthetically) the execution: as solitary prayer, as meditation, as performance, etc.. 
These transcriptions can therefore be presented in different religious, social, artistic contexts, in or in front of synagogues or other centers of worship (even on special occasions of holidays), at home, in the street, in political demonstrations or protests, in the stages of theaters, concert halls, etc..). They can be performed alone or in front of an audience, by one or more performers. 
The letters of the alphabet "speak" to the performer and to a possible audience through the movement of the body alone, a consequence of "hearing" the words in a certain way. Silence around the body is the only way the body can express the content of words, within itself, without having to add other elements (especially artistic ones) to fill in any gaps. It is therefore unthinkable to arbitrarily add music to the Text, because the Text in the Jewish tradition has already been thought of as music (chanting). It is also absurd to think of representing the Words with images or representations of various kinds. In this sense, the only, lawful and necessary images on the words or phrases of a verse can be those of the figurations of the alphabet itself, of the textual arrangement; therefore, the images of the body are not designed to show something (an external image, even though it is beautiful, but does not adhere to a content that serves as a basis), but to express the interiority, the soul of Scripture and the soul of the man who tries within himself to "say" and remember those words. 


UMBILÍCO-NAVEL

Objectual Composition

Ex Arboris Review of New Theatre, Catania – Sicily
Performers: Benedetto Caldarella, Daniela Orlando, Virgilio Vecchio

Conduction: Angelo Sturiale



Umbilíco, premiered at Vecchia Falegnameria Comunale in Catania, is a possible formal ordering of the general idea, theoretical and imaginative, that inspires the "Objectual Composition". From the very special laboratory experiences conducted together with "Famiglia Sfuggita", to which I have totally entrusted for recognized esteem and appreciation in the field of theatrical research in Sicily, I found myself in front of a very strange carpet of precious compositional materials. And as in front of a palette of colors, actions, sounds, movements, lights, expressive objects of any artistic nature, I decomposed, deformed, decontextualized the occurrence of space and time of their original constitutions, to recreate in an absolutely and necessarily isolated phase, a formal articulation that was not only obviously different from that provided initially by the previous work done in group, but that eventually denied the same intentional spirit of ideation and performance of the same events. In other words, I used the actions of  the group "Famiglia sfuggita", interpreting them exclusively as compositional objects, as I have always done with sounds, articulating their nature in a score to constitute a typically musical form.



FIFTH PIANO SONATA
musichoreography for pianist


If you think that you go to a concert to listen to the music and sounds that come from the fingers of a pianist, you will be disappointed. Or maybe fascinated. 
Because with the "Fifth Piano Sonata", the performer's fingers have become the scene of an abstract opera, in which they themselves are conceived as bodies of figures and forms whose purpose is to attract the eye of the bourgeois public into the trap that he himself continues to create (despite the post-Schoenberg aesthetic revolutions), out of ignorance or simply because of a lack of awareness.

I always like to sit next to the pianist to see his hands on the keyboard!

Fifth Sonata: 
So sit right here: you'll see what hands and sounds come out of these beautiful fingers!

Dances, real choreographies. Fingers like bodies on a keyboard: they play together and have fun in silence. narcissistic fingers, with accomplices arms and forearms


MIRABILE
for silent musician






THE BODY OF THE SOUND OF THE BODY
Creative Kinetography 

The idea of annulling the acoustic element of sound to give way to his silent imagination through the movement of the body alone is certainly not a choreographic, theatrical, or more generally "experimental" attempt to relate to music and compositional philosophy. Surely it is an attempt to reflect on the essence of sound and musical composition, but consequently it ends up involving dance (choreography), theatre, all forms of body expression in general; and who knows which and how many other physical or intellectual disciplines connected for some reason to movement and its repetition/repeatability. Yes, because the repeatability of an event or action is one of the most important logical-perceptive factors that stimulate the theoretical-philosophical reflection of any form of artistic expression, especially with regard to its analytical, phenomenological or even aesthetic-formal aspects.
The possibility and ability to classify, note, read and perform a sequence of bodily movements that silently evoke - without physical-acoustic elements - sound and music, constitutes not only an indicative and decisive directive for the genesis of a compositional thought, but above all defines an energetic (and formal) field through which it is possible to re-interpret the entire event; re-discovering and re-reading the artistic work, providing it with its specific vital legitimacy through its infinite forms of re-execution.



Daniela Orlando, performer