Between 2015 and 2016 I wrote two pieces for percussion: Wood-Skin Tracks for two players and live electronics, and Metal East-Journey for a single performer and "light" electronics.
The first composition involves two symmetrical sets of percussion, one of wood (wood-blocks, temple-blocks and marimba) and one of skin (bass drum and roto-toms). In the second piece the performer plays exclusively metal instruments. This attraction towards the percussion was triggered by Phasing (2012), for two pianos and two symmetrical sets of percussion instruments, and I believe it will continue in the future because it presents a sound universe of extraordinary wealth that has caught my interest only recently. Wood-Skin Tracks a is composition based on the spatial realization between the two sets of instruments, eminently stereophonic. But within this stereophony there is also a diagonal reading of the space (forward/backward) that gives further depth to the interplay of returns, paths and perspectives that the score offers with the aid of the electronics. The spatialization emphasizes, in the concert hall, the dialectic play between the two players on stage. The live electronics, on the other hand, multiplies the potentials of the dynamics, timbre and articulation, typical of the percussive technique, raising it to an augmented level that combines with the simple gesture that produces the acoustic sound until placing extreme emphasis on the "reason" (but not "cause") of its electro-acoustic transformation and multiplication. Ancestral, primitive, technological, innovative: these are some of the possible and justified adjectives to describe the atmosphere that these instruments are able to suggest, as they are lost in the night of times and yet are true witnesses of the contemporary world.
(Ivan Fedele)
· Moroni Gabriele (2017), 'Recensione del cd "Ivan Fedele - Phasing"', in Stradivarius, febbraio.
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