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Events

03 Oct 2017

Micro-Performances

Giancarlo Cardini

4 pm

We are very happy that the pianist Giancarlo Cardini, one of the top experts on and performers of Giuseppe Chiari's scores, is giving a series of micro-performances as part of the All Music is the same exhibition.

Giuseppi Chiari and Giancarlo Cardini met at a concert at which they were both involved in Rome in the late 1960s. In an interview (published in the book on the current exhibition) Cardini talks about Chiari: "I was a kind of pupil - there was an age gap of fifteen years between us - and for me, a novice in avant-garde practice, Chiari was a master. Meeting him was one of the most important encounters of my artistic life. Both his performances and his writing [...] had a big influence on me. [...] Do you hear that? The focus of attention is on the noises (the paper rustles), on the pauses, on the asymmetrical rhythm. The silence is just as important as the sound, because it creates tension. The other version (with one hand he quickly tears out a sheet of newspaper and crumples it) is less diverse, less exciting. I prefer the first option, even if it isn't as philological, because it reflects my personality. [...] If you present these works with objects there is a danger of slipping into a kind of ecstatic narcissism - which isn't unknown to musicians. This can turn the attention of the listener away from the production of sound and noise to the mere spectacle of the show the performer is putting on. This betrays the modesty inherent in Chiari's style. [...] In Chiari's compositions, every moment is determined by a single action; actions are never simultaneous. [...] From the very beginning he was against the culture of culturalising contemporary music."

Giancarlo Cardini is a pianist and composer. Born in 1940, he lived in Florence and taught here for many years at the Luigi Cherubini Music Conservatory. Together with Sylvano Bussotti, Daniele Lombardi, Albert Mayr, Pietro Grossi, Marcello Aitiani, Sergio Maltagliati and Giuseppe Chiari he was part of the Florentine avant-garde music scene of the 1960s, which dealt with the relationship between sound, gesture and vision. Cardini collaborated with many international artists and composers, including John Cage and Morton Feldman. His book Bolle di sapone (Soap Bubbles), a collection of micro-poems about the perception of everyday life, was published in 1990. In 2011 Paolo Carradori published Giancarlo Cardini: la musica, il novecento, with contributions by Sylvano Bussotti, Renzo Cresti, Mario Gamba, published by Marco Del Bucchia editore.

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