In Movimento

The music I call improvised seems to be made for a unique performance, live, a panorama that blossoms and fades in the very moment of its appearance. Those who are present perform, listen, and participate, while those who are not there are excluded from that moment of sounds and silences.
But what if that music is recorded, engraved, mastered, and offered for listening enclosed in a CD without requiring the presence at its performance? Is it still a one-off act now that it is repeatable? Is it still improvised?
Through listening and listening, I realized that these are not rhetorical questions, because I do not know how to answer in those terms: the questions came to mind, so they were prompted by the various listens, but without asking for poorly conclusive answers. I write with intention “listening and listening” instead of “re-listening” because I don’t feel repetition in my gestures. Listening itself is a gesture, a motionless action, but an active one that is renewed here. Of course, the music performed from sheet music is also new with each listen. Here, however, it is so in a different way.
When listening to a written piece of music, after the first time, I know what awaits me, at least in part. And my listening adapts and travels along those tracks. Not here: here, I don’t expect, I expect nothing, free from the weight and the comfort of already knowing. Each time is the time.
So, repeated listening is a new experience, as new is its meaning.
Listening
Focused listening, I lose, I find; this is listening.
I listen while doing something else, a background that fades away and reclaims me; this is listening.
I listen to discern the instruments, the notes and who plays them, and their momentary and consistent dialogue; this is listening.
I listen to recognize the sounds and let them form and fade away, remembering or forgetting them; this is listening.
So, improvised is the music, the alloy is reforged that merges sounds and pauses, the clarinet and the piano, Alberto and Nino, who are two in the renewed ancient encounter that unites them, and me, who finally author, I hold together, everything, every listening.
To a listening, of many, I try to give voice.
From the block of silence, touches, caresses, taps, breaths… the shape of sound emerges. The morning grows with drops of water and sunlight.
It gains confidence, vibrates, and moves around. The step becomes sure; it imposes itself. Where do you go, where do you go, where do you go where do you go…? Then, it hesitates, settles, rises on tiptoe, rests beats the step looks around, moves toward… determined, cutting through the crowd… yet alone, if only, if I am, if I sound. I tell, listen, how many roads and asphalt lights, we go, I alone – I alone – together we… alone.

(Giuseppe Jiso Forzani)

Time, care, waiting.
Seeking, discovering, forgetting.
Appearances, astonishment, silence.
Soiling, risk, clean up.
Start again, file, remove.
Add, discard, collect.
Discards, fragments, heirlooms.
Saying, not saying, silences.
Sound, matter, play.
Freedom, rigour, anarchy:
30 years in duo

(Alberto Braida)

Talking about the duo with Alberto is not easy; I need to figure out where to start. A human and musical relationship that has lasted thirty years is important, articulate, profound, and perhaps inexplicable. We do not and never have the same tastes, nature, and history. Yes, we both studied classical music and jazz seriously, but our references, paths, and passions sometimes coincide and sometimes diverge. The similarities count as much as the differences. Certainly, however, there is an underlying principle that unites us and that can be defined in many ways. Doubt, curiosity, patience, waiting, necessity, the search for the ‘natural’, the ‘non-thought’, the essential.
It was not easy at first. By reasoning and planning rationally, we could have resolved our musical and other differences in many ways. Instead, we rehearsed for three years every week, unhurriedly, digging, before discovering a fertile ground, a common and shared ground, which did not have to be explained, but which was perceptible. Only then did we decide to record, not once but… three times. And then, we released our first work, 19 Calefazioni. These first years were characterized by a process of subtraction that led us to find common ground in music made up of angles, fragments, scattered notes, intervals, and many silences. There was never, however, in our journey a voluntary, conceptual rejection of specific parameters and certain materials but an inevitable and necessary focus on the coordinates that made us find music that was alive, music that was ours, music that allowed us to be unveiled, discovered, brought to life. Over time, we, more or less explicitly, recovered melody, harmony, tempo, and composition. Deep down, however, while realizing the change, we are convinced that we are doing the same thing and searching for the same “something” we were chasing thirty years ago.
And it is still as beautiful as it was then. Perhaps more so.

(Giancarlo Nino Locatelli, novembre 2024)