Events/Openings

Metrica Elementare is a Poetry & Music performance where the music by Marco Visconti-Prasca responds to Federico Sanguineti's spoken words to seal the partnership between the musician-improviser and the acting narrator.

"I met Federico in Salford (greater-Manchester, U.K.) when, in 2012,I conducted Luciano Berio's 'LABORINTUS II' with him performing the narrator role.(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLJpdggL020 )" V.P. tells us "and that encounter sparkled the desire to collaborate on a common project focused on both the 'spoken-word' and the 'music': the prosody of the language as the source of the rhythmic and formal structure of the music event".

To satisfy such an agenda F.S. has written the poetry collection of 'Metrica Elementare', while V.P., in order to provide the narrator voice of a timber contour, has composed a sort of musical 'matrix' which gives room to the music material to either expand or contract according to the instrumentation of the occasion (duo; duo + SATB choir; duo + SATB choir + chamber orchestra....).

For its 'duo' version (saxophones & voice) four poems ('Sciolti'; 'Sponetto'; 'Ballata Minima' and 'Acrostico) shape the form of the sonorial event. The resulting performance is like an improvisatory event that unfolds in real time the actual lay-out of music score.
- Federico Sanguineti:
"Metrica Elementare e' manuale pensato da chi poesia balbetta
per ogni infante che si crede adulto un primo sillabando endecasillabo
e di sillaba in sillaba procede finalmente formando un qualche distico
quindi tutto disciolto in versi sciolti si balla una ballata che e' uno
sballo
dalla musica vinti sono i versi che lacrime deversan deversati
ogni forma si cerca di formare come un nome si forma nell'acrostico
ahi nel sonetto culmina la metrica e serenata nasce dalla musica."
 
Federico Sanguineti (1955 Turin, Italy) is an Italian poet, writer, performer and scholar.
He performed as a speaker for some Italian contemporary music leading composers, like: Paolo Aralla, Luciano Berio, Gilberto Cappelli, Gianvincenzo Cresta, Alberto Caprioli, Paolo Perezzani e Fausto Sebastiani. Sanguineti writings are focused manly on Italian classic literature – Macchiavelli, Dante Alighieri, Boccaccio, Tasso – and its link with the modernity – Gramsci and Macchiavelli.
He lectured extensively abroad (Europe and Australia).
He holds a professorship in the Literature and Philosophy department of the University of Salerno (Italy).

Marco V.P. is a composer and saxophone player whose music language is the byproduct of the influences from both jazz and "contemporary classical" practices. 
His more recent collaborations are with the Italian poet Federico Sanguineti ('Metrica Elementare'); the afro-American bass player Jamaaladeen Tacuma ("Coolness Is Forever") and the Italian clarinet and saxophone player Marco Colonna ("Tongues On Fire").
Past collaborations included performances - both as an instrumentalist and as a conductor - with George Lewis; Joelle Leandre; Ken Ueno; Will Edmondes; David Liebman; Lee Konitz; Enrico Pieranunzi; Bob Brookmeyer;“Slide” Hampton; Bobby Watson; David Murray; Markus Stockhausen and the flutist James Newton. In 2007 Marco V.P. was in the founding group of the international ensemble “Live Streaming Music Workshop” as its Music Director.
Visconti-Prasca’s music has been performed mostly in Italy, the U.S.A. and in the U.K  by notable soloists and ensembles such as Rohan de Saram, Roger Marsh, Anna Maria Morini, David Liebman, Bobby Watson, the “Orchestra Sinfonica G. Verdi”, the “Brave New Works Ensemble”, and the “Black Hair Ensemble,” and were heard in venues such as the “Auditorium di Milano,” the “Teatro Lirico” in Milan, the “Early Music Center” in York, the “Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall” in York, the NEC Auditorium in Boston.
Visconti-Prasca studied composition with Andrea Talmelli, Ivan Fedele, Franco Donatoni e Luis De Pablo (Civica Scuola di Musica, Milan, Italy). He holds degrees from “Civica Scuola di Musica-Sezione Contemporanea” in Milan, (B.A. in Composition), from TUFTS University (Medford, U.S.A., M.A. in Music Composition ), and a PhD in Composition from the University of York (U.K.). He learned the saxophone through studies with Sal Nistico, Andy Scherrer, David Liebman and Steve Grossman.
 Marco Visconti-Prasca taught at the "Civica Scuola di Musica" in Milan and lectured at the Harvard University; the New england conservatory; the Atlantic center for the Arts and the "Giuseppe Verdi" Conservatory in Milan. 
 “Marco Visconti-Prasca's [music]... energetically discoursed in a vocabulary that, while hinting at both caf・jazz and Messiaen-like refraction, was idiosyncratically original.” Matthew Guerrieri -“Boston Globe” del 25 Giugno, 2007.