Luciano Chessa (, born January 12, 1971, in
Sassari, Italy) is a musician, performance/visual/installation artist, and musicologist.
As a composer, conductor, pianist, and
musical saw /
Vietnamese dan bau soloist, Luciano Chessa has been active in Europe, the U.S., Australia, and South America. Compositions include a piano and percussion duet after
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini (; 5 March 1922 – 2 November 1975) was an Italian poet, filmmaker, writer and intellectual who also distinguished himself as a journalist, novelist, translator, playwright, visual artist and actor. He is considered one of ...
’s "Petrolio", written for
Sarah Cahill and Chris Froh and presented in 2004 at the
American Academy in Rome
The American Academy in Rome is a research and arts institution located on the Gianicolo (Janiculum Hill) in Rome.
The academy is a member of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers.
History
In 1893, a group of American architects, ...
, "Il pedone dell’aria" (“air walker”) for orchestra and double children choir, premiered in 2006 at the Auditorium of Turin's Lingotto and subsequently released on DVD, and two works in collaboration with artist
Terry Berlier
Terry Berlier (born 1972, in Cincinnati, Ohio) is an artist and sculptor whose work addresses themes of the environment and queer practice.
Life
Berlier holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) from Miami University in Ohio and a Master of Fine Arts ...
: "Louganis" for piano and TV/VCR combo (performed at the
Monday Evening Concerts in 2010) and "Inkless Imagination IV" for viola, mini-bass musical saw, turntables, piano, percussion, FM radios, blimp and video projection (premiered at UC Davis’
Mondavi Center
The Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts is a performing arts venue located on the UC Davis campus in unincorporated Yolo County, California. It is named for arts patron and vineyard operator Robert Mondavi, who donated US$1 ...
by the Empyrean Ensemble).
Among his compositions should be mentioned a large orchestral work commissioned by the Orchestra Filarmonica di Torino, Italy and titled "Ragazzi incoscienti scarabocchiano sulla porta di un negozio fallito an.1902" (reckless children scribble on the door of a failed shop in 1902), "Movements", a multimedia work for 16mm film, dan bau and amplified film projectors produced in collaboration with filmmaker Rick Bahto, "Come un’infanzia", a guitar plus string quartet piece for the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and ''A Heavenly Act'', an opera commissioned by
SFMOMA and Opera Parallèle with a libretto by
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...
and video by
Kalup Linzy
Kalup Linzy (born July 23, 1977) is an American video and performance artist who currently lives and works in Tulsa, OK. His performance are characterized by their low-tech quality, themes of community, socializing, family, the church, sexuality a ...
. ''A Heavenly Act'' premiered on 19 August 2011, at the
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) is a multi-disciplinary contemporary arts center in San Francisco, California, United States. Located in Yerba Buena Gardens, YBCA features visual art, performance, and film/video that celebrates local, nati ...
in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...
, in a staged production by the Ensemble Parallèle, conducted by Nicole Paiement and featuring Linzy.
Recent premieres include "LIGHTEST", a SFMOMA commission presented on 16 November 2013, at the SF Columbarium, and "Set and Setting", a San Francisco Contemporary Music Players commission presented on 18 February 2014, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
Chessa's first record, "Humus" (1997), out on the Italian cult label Destination X, received excellent reviews in all the major Italian musical magazines (Fare Musica, Rumore,
Il Mucchio Selvaggio) and was voted by
Rockerilla’s critics as one of the 10 best international recordings of 1997. His "Peyrano", which includes recordings produced in the 90s, has been re-released in March 2012 by the Swiss label Skank Bloc Records.
Luciano Chessa has been performing futurist sound poetry for well over 10 years. His reading of Italian poetry to accompany a performance of the Grammy Award Nominated
New Century Chamber Orchestra
The New Century Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1992 by cellist, Miriam Perkoff, and violist, Wieslaw Pogorzelski. The goal of the founders was to present classical music in a fresh and unique way in the San Francisco Bay Area. The music director ...
in San Francisco's
Herbst Theatre
The Herbst Theatre is an auditorium in the War Memorial and Performing Arts Center in the Civic Center, San Francisco. The 928-seat hall hosts programs as diverse as '' City Arts & Lectures'', SF Jazz, and San Francisco Performances.
Architect ...
in 2000 was granted with excellent reviews in the San Francisco press, and in 2001 he has given the modern premiere of Francesco Cangiullo's explosive Futurist sound poems "Piedigrotta" and "Serata in onore di Yvonne" to critical acclaim. From the year 1999 to 2004, he has been a member of the UC Davis Gospel Choir, where he served as assistant conductor to Calvin Lymos, the choir's principal director.
As a musicologist, his areas of research competence include twentieth-century, experimental, and late fourteenth-century music (
Ars Subtilior). His research on Italian Futurism, which he has presented and published internationally, has shown for the first time the occult relationship between
Luigi Russolo
Luigi Carlo Filippo Russolo (30 April 1885 – 4 February 1947) was an Italian Futurist painter, composer, builder of experimental musical instruments, and the author of the manifesto ''The Art of Noises'' (1913). He is often regarded as one of ...
’s intonarumori and
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially res ...
’s mechanical noisemakers. He is author of Luigi Russolo Futurist. Noise, Visual Arts, and the Occult, the first monograph ever to be dedicated to Russolo and
The Art of Noises
''The Art of Noises'' ( it, L'arte dei Rumori) is a Futurist manifesto written by Luigi Russolo in a 1913 letter to friend and Futurist composer Francesco Balilla Pratella. In it, Russolo argues that the human ear has become accustomed to the ...
. Published by the
University of California Press
The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by facult ...
, the book has received enthusiastic reviews:
"With meticulous attention to primary sources, galvanised by daring leaps of imagination,
hessareveals an array of unorthodox ideas, creative tensions, and contradictions within Russolo's milieu."
.."Chessa's prose embodies the sheer pleasure of discovery through research."
.."The frenzied pace of Chessa's writing retains a visionary edge throughout, and the book itself could be seen as an example of synthesis and dynamism." (The Wire, June 2012)
"The most comprehensive source of Russolo available in English." (Examiner.com)
"In Luigi Russolo, Futurist: Noise, Visual Arts, and the Occult, composer and San Francisco Conservatory music history professor Luciano Chessa reconstructs Russolo’s life through ambitious archival research, uncovering and digesting esoteric and obscure texts to reverse-engineer how the artist’s eccentric interests influenced his creative output." (Brainpickings.org)
In 2018, he wrote a brief essay on Russolo's ongoing importance in contemporary music for the first ever Argentinean translation of Luigi Russolo's "L'arte dei Rumori", published in 2018 by Dobra Robota Editora. He was also the main guest in the launching of said book in Buenos Aires in December 2017.
Chessa's Futurist expertise has resulted in an invitation by
RoseLee Goldberg, General Director of the New York-based Biennale of the Arts PERFORMA to direct the first reconstruction project of Russolo's earliest intonarumori orchestra, and to curate concerts of music specifically commissioned for this orchestra. The new intonarumori ensemble has been unveiled in October 2009 at San Francisco's YBCA's Novellus Theater and then presented in NYC's
Town Hall in November for PERFORMA 09—both events being co-produced by PERFORMA and SFMOMA, and featuring Minna Choi's Magik*Magik Orchestra. This production presented an impressive array of world premieres written by such composers and ensembles as
Blixa Bargeld,
John Butcher,
Tony Conrad
Anthony Schmalz Conrad (March 7, 1940 – April 9, 2016) was an American video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician, composer, sound artist, teacher, and writer. Active in a variety of media since the early 1960s, he was a pioneer of both ...
,
James Fei,
Ellen Fullman, Ghostdigital with Finboggi Petusson and Caspar Electronics,
Nick Hallett,
Carla Kihlstedt
Carla Kihlstedt (born 1971) is an American composer, violinist, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist, originally from Lancaster, Pennsylvania and currently working from a home studio on Cape Cod.
She is a founding member of Tin Hat Trio (1997, ...
+ Matthias Bossi,
Ulrich Krieger
Ulrich Krieger (born 1962 in Freiburg) is a German contemporary composer, performer, improviser and experimental rock musician based in Los Angeles.
Krieger's artistic work spans a broad field from contemporary classical composition and free impro ...
,
Joan La Barbara
Joan Linda La Barbara (born June 8, 1947) is an American vocalist and composer known for her explorations of non-conventional or "extended" vocal techniques. Considered to be a vocal virtuoso in the field of contemporary music, she is credited w ...
,
Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros (May 30, 1932 – November 24, 2016) was an American composer, accordionist and a central figure in the development of post-war experimental and electronic music.
She was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Cente ...
,
Pablo Ortiz,
Mike Patton
Michael Allan Patton (born January 27, 1968) is an American singer, producer, film composer and voice actor, best known as the lead vocalist of the alternative metal band Faith No More. Noted for his vocal proficiency, diverse singing techni ...
,
Anat Pick,
Elliott Sharp
Elliott Sharp (born March 1, 1951) is an American contemporary classical composer, multi-instrumentalist, and performer.
A central figure in the avant-garde and experimental music scene in New York City since the late 1970s, Sharp has released ...
,
Jennifer Walshe
Jennifer Walshe (born 1 June 1974) is an Irish composer, vocalist and artist.
Biography
Jennifer Walshe was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1974. She studied composition with John Maxwell Geddes at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, ...
,
Theresa Wong,
Text of Light
Text may refer to:
Written word
* Text (literary theory), any object that can be read, including:
**Religious text, a writing that a religious tradition considers to be sacred
**Text, a verse or passage from scripture used in expository preachin ...
. The production, also featuring Chessa's L’acoustique ivresse, for bassvoice and intonarumori ensemble and the modern premiere of Russolo's Risveglio di una città in a new diplomatic edition by Chessa, was hailed by ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' among the best events in the arts of 2009. In September 2010 Chessa presented the intonarumori in the first Italian appearance: a concert at the MART in Rovereto, Italy, as part of the Festival Transart, which featured performances by
Nicholas Isherwood
Nicholas Isherwood is a Franco-American bass singer, who specialises in contemporary and baroque music. Notable roles include "Lucifer" in the world premieres of Stockhausen’s '' Montag'', '' Dienstag'', and '' Freitag'' from '' Licht'' at L ...
and included Sylvano Bussotti's "VARIAZIONE RUSSOLO-Slancio d'angoli", and two new commissioned pieces by
Margareth Kammerer and
Teho Teardo. In March 2011 Chessa conducted the Orchestra of Futurist Noise Intoners in a sold out concert for
Berliner Festspiele
The Berliner Festspiele (German for Berlin Festivals) are a series of festivals, art exhibitions, and other cultural events organized all year long by a common organization in Berlin. Events are held at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, a pre-ex ...
MaerzMusik
MaerzMusik is a festival of the Berliner Festspiele and has been held annually since 2002 in March at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele and other venues. It is the successor festival to the Musik-Biennale Berlin and is considered one of the most im ...
Festival, which included "Gramophone Saraswati," a new piece by
Amelia Cuni and
Werner Durand. The Orchestra of Futurist Noise Intoners is currently touring internationally.
In December 2011 Chessa conducted the project with the
New World Symphony
New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created.
New or NEW may refer to:
Music
* New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz
Albums and EPs
* ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013
* ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, ...
in their new Frank Gehry designed
New World Center
The New World Center is a concert hall in the South Beach section of Miami Beach, Florida, designed by Frank Gehry. It is the home of the New World Symphony, with a capacity of 756 seats. It opened in January 2011.
Located one block north of ...
’s Concert Hall packed to capacity as part of a Performa-curated special event to celebrate the tenth anniversary of
Art Basel
Art Basel is a for-profit, privately owned and managed, international art fair staged annually in Basel, Switzerland; Miami Beach; Hong Kong and from 2022, Paris. Art Basel works in collaboration with the host city's local institutions to help ...
, Miami Beach. The performance included Joan La Barbara’s "Striations" and the premiere of
Lee Ranaldo
Lee Mark Ranaldo (born February 3, 1956) is an American musician, singer-songwriter, guitarist, writer, visual artist and record producer, best known as a co-founder of the alternative rock band Sonic Youth (guitar and vocals). In 2004, ''Rolling ...
’s "It All Begins Now (Whose Streets? Our Streets!)". Both pieces featured their respective composers performing alongside Chessa and the New World Symphony.
In May 2013 at the Experimentation Center of the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires he presented a series of events to celebrate the Centennial of Russolo's Art of Noises. A double LP dedicated to the Orchestra of Futurist Noise Intoners and documenting the first phase of this project has been released on the label Sub Rosa in November 2013. In December 2013 Chessa conducted the Orchestra of Futurist Noise Intoners to a sold-out crowd at the RedCat in Los Angeles. In June 2014 Chessa performed three concerts with Futurist Sound Poetry at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, as part of the retrospective exhibit on Italian Futurism; his voice reading Marinietti's Manifesto and Poetry to accompany Jen Sachs’ videos was experienced by all exhibit visitors, from February to September 2014. A new version of Cangiullo's Piedigrotta conceived for the Peter B. Lewis Theater of the Guggenheim Museum, directed, and scored for 5 Neapolitan folk instruments by Chessa, received a standing ovation on 9 June 2014.
Luciano Chessa has been interviewed by the
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...
(KPIX/KBHK) television channel as an expert on Italian 1990s hip-hop and by the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
as Luigi Russolo's foremost scholar. He has been featured in
, and appears in Peter Esmonde's documentary on Ellen Fullman, 5 Variations on a Long String (2010). Chessa teaches at the
, serves in the Advisory Board of TACET, the international research publication dedicated to Experimental Music of the
, and collaborates with SF's Italian Cultural Institute. His music is published by RAI TRADE, the Italian National Broadcast Channels’ music publishing company, and Edizioni Carrara.
He holds a D.M.A. in Piano performance and a M.A. in Composition from the
in Bologna, Italy, a M.A. magna cum laude in History of Medieval Music from the
, and a Ph.D. in Musicology and Music Criticism from the University of California at Davis. He taught and lectured at numerous institutions including
, Sydney's and Melbourne's Conservatories and Universities, the Conservatory of Music in Bologna, UC Davis, UC Berkeley, Stanford University, and
.
English Home Page https://www.lucianochessa.com/
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