[concert introduction 18.30 | parish home]

Marco Fusi, violin, Pierluigi Billone, electronic sound diffusion, Davide Gagliardi, sound engineering

Marco Fusi, Pierluigi Billone | Madrigals for violin, speakers and music stands

Luigi Nono: La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura [1989] for violin, 8 speakers and 10 music stands

About the concert

Italian composer Luigi Nono’s motto was what he came to read on a monastery wall in Toledo: “wanderer, there are no paths, only wandering!”. The music of his later life came to revolve around open forms, wandering sounds and space. Perhaps his La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura for violin and loudspeakers is one of the most astonishing examples of this. The violinist walks like a pilgrim around the acoustic room surrounded by speakers. In a dialogue between a violinist and the one who “diffuses” the electronic sound, a peculiar musical encounter arises, which in every performance is never the same. There is not ONE way. The work, which is close to 60 minutes long, requires not only a huge study by the violinist but also by the person who handles the electronic. Each performance requires a rigorous preparation to produce the polyphony, the exploration of the spatial, and the attempt (which Luigi Nono was so obsessed with) to make way for a new way of listening to music. One where you do not hear yourself in others, not an academic listening, but one where listening, once again, as it may have been before – is a community. A way to listen together.

About Marco Fusi

Marco Fusi is a violinist and viola player and a passionate advocate of contemporary music and over the years he has worked closely with both the new guard and today’s most influential composers. Among the composers whose works Fusi premiered are, for example: Pierluigi Billone, Salvatore Sciarrino, Peter Eötvös and Brian Ferneyhough.

As a musician, he regularly performs with some of contemporary art music’s leading ensembles such as Klangforum Wien, MusikFabrik, Phoenix (Basel) and more. Marco has recorded several solo albums, released by Kairos, Stradivarius, Col Legno, Da Vinci, Geiger Grammofon.

Marco also plays the viola d’amore, commissions new pieces and collaborates with composers to promote and expand the existing repertoire for the instrument. After his master’s degree in violin and composition at the Conservatory of Milan, Marco received his doctorate from the University of Antwerp, with a dissertation on how Giacinto Scelsi’s music is performed. He is currently a professor of violin at the Alessandria Conservatory and a researcher in musical performance at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp.

marcofusi.net