A music project that has been gradually evolving for the past two years finally reached an important milestone this morning at the Macinarino Recording Studio in Loro Ciuffenna just outside Arezzo, when the last edits were made to the final mix. Andrea Guzzoletti’s first album – Invisible Cities is now finished. The man at the controls in the studio was Lorenzo “Moka” Tommasini. who has worked with, amongst others, people such as; Hector Zazou, Sarah-Jane Morris, Stewart Copeland, Roger Eno, Sandy Dillon, Piero Pelu, Carmen Consoli , Ligabue, Negrita, Lorenzo Jovanotti and Paolo Fresu
The project now moves on to the next stage – getting the music out to you the public. As Andrea says in the interview at the end of this article, he has chosen a European label to market Invisible Cities and is expecting the CD to reach the shops later on this year or early in the spring of 2010.
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The artist Keane has also been involved in this project during the winter months. He has been listening to the music that Andrea has been producing right from the start of this project and has been producing images based on what he could hear. Leaving aside his normal medium of canvas and paints, he has been producing a series of black and white monoprints. – more images here
The book Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino explores imagination and the imaginable through the descriptions of cities by an explorer, Marco Polo. It is framed as a conversation between the aging and busy emperor Kublai Khan, who constantly has merchants coming to describe the state of his expanding and vast empire, and Polo. The majority of the book consists of brief prose poems describing 55 cities, apparently narrated by Polo. Short dialogues between the two characters are interspersed every five to ten cities and are used to discuss various ideas presented by the cities on a wide range of topics including linguistics and human nature.
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Not only is the book structured around an interlocking pattern of numbered sections, but the length of each section’s title graphically outlines a continuously oscillating sine wave, or perhaps a city skyline. The interludes between Khan and Polo are no less poetically constructed than the cities, and form a framing device, a story with a story, that plays with the natural complexity of language and stories.
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… and for those who are curious as to just what kind of music will be featured on the Invisible Cities album … maybe a quick jump back in time to July 2007 when Andrea performed a small part of the one of his compositions in the piazza … this can be seen here or how about in April last year at the Barga Jazz Club where he performed an even longer section with Roberto Cecchetto – chitarra | Stefano Onorati – pianoforte | Walter Paoli – batteria |… this can be seen here
Click on the link below to hear an interview with Andrea recorded in the barganews offfice this morning (in Italiano)
Almeno si poteva leggere le Città Invisibili di Calvino. Ma la versione Guzzoletti rimane sempre top secret, tutta nascosta, anche se i piccoli pezzi gia sentiti due anni fa erano molto impressionante. Senti Andrea, colla musica ci vuole uno ruolo del pubblico — e non soltanto del compositore e dei musicisti.