Festival PORTA D’ORIENTE
E poi… la vita diventa magia… (VOYAGES)
Stati alterati di coscienza in VOYAGES
VOYAGES – Percorsi e incontri dell’anima
VOYAGES – Percorsi e incontri dell’anima
Gaia from “Abbasalìa – Storie dal vento e dal mare”
From “Abbasalìa – Stories from the wind and the sea”
Maurizio Puxeddu, music and composition
Silvia Layla, dance and choreography
To Mother Earth
GAIA (Maurizio Puxeddu, 1996)
For piano and delay
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Gaia is a minimalist piece for piano and delay, it presents rhythmic repetitions and overlaps of elementary and minimal materials, associated with a delay – an electronic effect – which creates in real time a repetition of the sounds produced by the pianist.
The delay in GAIA is used to create a pulsating rhythmic grid, from the right to the left audio channel, on which the musician places all the sound materials and develops the musical discourse quietly, increasing and decreasing in a different way, between right and left hands, the dynamics and temporality of the sounds, between the sound of the piano and the one processed by the delay.
This registered version of GAIA is a theme to be developed. The live performer can afford variations and interactions, playing and relating with his action on the keys to the fixed rhythmic grid (delay), in a more important way than in recording, so as to shift the dynamic and temporal focus.
Listen to GAIA in the video for Abbasalìa – Stories from the wind and the sea
Abbasalìa, music from Sardinia
ABBASALÌA
Copyright © Maurizio Puxeddu (1996/2000)
The album entitled ABBASALÌA collects some musical pieces for piano, as they were improvised and recorded by Maurizio Puxeddu between 1996 and 2000. It was a preparatory work for something more articulated and complex, a bit like when a painter makes a first sketch, in pencil, pen or charcoal, of the work he intends to create in its entirety. Often, in these sketches there is all the pathos and the meaning of what we could perceive in the work that will eventually be created. We find the freshness of the creative and expressive act.
The recording took place with a piano, exactly with the same original instrument on which the pieces were conceived and composed. In the following years, various arrangements of these music were then prepared, for live musical performances in the following musical projects:
1996 – Aterusonus – Maurizio Puxeddu (launeddas, piano), Alessandro Garau (percussion), Adriano Orrù (double-bass)
1999 – The new launeddas – Maurizio Puxeddu (launeddas, accordion), Silvia Corda (piano), Adriano Orrù (double-bass), Massimo Cappai (soprano sax), Alessandro Corona (drum, percussion)
2000 – Intrecci – Maurizio Puxeddu (direction, composition, launeddas, piano, sound inventions, electronics), Enrico Di Felice (flutes), Roberto Pellegrini (percussion)
2000 – Mediterranea – Maurizio Puxeddu, Silvia Corda, Adriano Orrù, Roberto Pellegrini
2001 – Mediterranea – Maurizio Puxeddu (direction, composition, launeddas, piano), Enrico Di Felice (flutes), Roberto Pellegrini (percussion)
2002 – Keepers of the time – Maurizio Puxeddu (direction, composition and arrangements, piano, Sardinian guitar, bena ‘e corru, pitiolus), Gianluigi Trovesi (clarinets), Coro a Tenore “San Gavino” di Oniferi, Rossella Faa (voice), Enrico Di Felice (flute), Massimo Cappai (sax), Nicola Piras (sax), Giuseppe Orrù (launeddas), Renzo Zucca (launeddas), Fabrizio Meloni (cello), Pierpaolo Cardia (synth), Alberto Cabiddu (percussion), Alessandro Corona (drum), Massimo Tore (double-bass)
What you will hear on this album, finalized and released in 2020, are not the subsequent elaborations, but the original themes and sound developments.
Abbasalìa
1. Gaia (3’49”)
2. Wind and sea (5’37”)
3. Ballu tundu (4’38”)
4. Istedda (5’14”)
5. Bardana (4’34”)
6. Namuhni (2’50”)
7. Slavo meditation (2’48”)
8. Nurake (3’15”)
9. Remote dance (3’46”)
10. Mariazioni (9’42”)
Copyright © Maurizio Puxeddu (1996/2000)
Credits
Maurizio Puxeddu: Piano
Compositions by Maurizio Puxeddu
Audio and graphic editing by M.Puxeddu
For audio editing, the following were used:
(1996-2000) SYNTRILLIUM SOFTWARE Cool Edit PRO, EDIROL UA-5,
(2020) PRESONUS Studio One 4 Professional, PRESONUS StudioLive 32 III, PRESONUS Eris 5, Bowers & Wilkins 601 S2.
The piano used is a GENERALMUSIC Real Piano PRO 2.
In Gaia and Remote dance a delay was used in real time.
Acknowledgments
For the choice of the cover, I thank Enrico Di Felice because, advising me to rotate the inverted color photo I had submitted to him vertically, he turned on the light bulb. Look, it looks like a sea with foaming waves. Graphics also play their part and should have contextual meaning.
PARISTORIA
PARISTORIA
“… fundamental was the collaboration of the musician Maurizio Puxeddu who created the sound effects and composed the original music, which support the entire stage set, created following the evolution of the show, interacting with it to ensure that creativity was in total harmony with the individual scenes. ”
Gianfranco Angei (director)
Copyright © Maurizio Puxeddu (2002)
Notes on music
The musical work for the show PARISTORIA has drawn fully on the research I have been doing in Sardinia (for over fifteen years now) on the ethnic musical instruments of our island culture. In this research there are two main strands: the first relating to the recovery of tradition, the second based on innovation. Some results, finding a natural harmony with the work of the Actores Alidos, have therefore flowed into the realization of the music necessary for the show in question.
Sardinian instruments, like my original music, not forgetting the accumulation of cultures with which the Sardinians have dealt, adhere (I don’t like to say that they bend) to the needs of the scene, suggesting resolutions or emphasizing magical settings, supported by other ethnic Mediterranean instruments and electronic instruments: launeddas, sulittu, benas ‘e corru, tumbarinu’ and Gavoi, triangulu, ischiglittos, pitiolus, crocorigas, darbuka, bendir, accordion, piano, transverse flutes, synthesizers, are all the tools used in this work.
And then, incredibly, the sound of su sulittu, the reed flute of Sardinia, weaving memories of distant melodies, in the scene of the Sartiglia, it hisses and winds, or, by choice, but it seems almost by scenic suggestion, horse neigh .
The launeddas that traditionally play in “major”, cheerful and joyful, for the scene of the Duel and the Love Encounter, in order to make the atmosphere dramatic through the “minor key”, are modified by combining different “reeds” coming from different cunzertu.
Dreamy atmospheres also for the Dance of the torches where su tumbarinu ‘and Gavoi, played with an unconventional technique (i.e. hitting the skin membrane with your fingers), creates a sound carpet, together with piano and synthesizer, on which rests the melody of a transverse flute with a soft sound.
But sometimes the compositional wisdom has to step aside, leaving room for noise and sound effects. The job of the composer musician becomes a balancing act, a matter of taste in the choice of the piece of ambient noise to be used, in the editing of the various recordings, cut and glued thanks to the computer, until it becomes what seems normal to us when listening. “worked”.
It was fun to record the crickets in Sant’Isidoro, going specifically to interview these cute little animals, or the voices of children, in a kindergarten in Cagliari, unaware of their theatrical audio debut.
Maurizio Puxeddu (composer)
Launeddas in “Lintu e pintu” by Mario Medas
LINTU E PINTU (1992/93)
Theatrical text: Mario Medas
Directed by: Gianluca Medas
Soundtrack: Maurizio Puxeddu
LINTU E PINTU is a theatrical show in Sardinian language, the text is by Mario Medas (great actor and author of Sardinian theater), staged by the Associazione Figli d’Arte Medas under the direction of Gianluca Medas.
For this show (I signed the soundtrack) there was the need to create different atmospheres, melancholic, gloomy, sweet, containing and scanning the theatrical performance. There is also the use of launeddas, modified to be able to play in a minor key (traditional launeddas play in a major key). Most of the original music of the show refer to melodic / rhythmic cells of traditional Sardinian music.
You can listen launeddas instrument at the following minutes:
23:43 Eugenia (Launeddas original music )
36:18 Cecilia (Launeddas original music )
In addition to the sounds recorded with some acoustic instruments, such as launeddas and classic guitar, there are many synthetic sounds deriving from synthesizers and sound production modules (ROLAND D50, E-MU SYSTEM Proteus / 1) and the use of an effects processor YAMAHA SPX 50D to make the main character’s voice of consciousness (played by Mario Medas).
The music preparation work was carried out in close contact with Gianluca (the director) and Mario Medas, reading and rereading the script to understand its structure and where original music was needed. During the rehearsals I used to bring the musical samples to verify the goodness of the music, to understand its length and the expressive intensity needed. After the approval I moved on to the final realization of the tracks. A part of this musical work consisted in the realization of the voice of conscience of Ziu Basili (Mario Medas), which took the name of “Su stromingiu”, recorded by Mario Medas himself. In the show, the voice of conscience (recorded) dialogues with Ziu Basili (who performs live). This fact, having to dialogue with a recorded voice, often makes it difficult to realize the timings and inflections of the voices in the blow and response of the dialogues. During the recording sessions I was amazed how Mario resolved the issue in an exceptional way. In fact, it was as if he were giving the voice to a cartoon character of a large production, with spectacular voice inflections, imagining the answers or how he would dialogue live with the character Su stromingiu.
Maurizio Puxeddu (composer)
Characters and performers
Ziu Basili: Mario Medas
Ziu Basili giovane: Damiano Oghittu
Madre di Ziu Basili: Teresa Podda
Callistu (figlio di Ziu Basili): Giulio Landis
Nuora: Frida De Palmas
Nipote: Noemi Medas
Nipote: Sara Medas
Cecilia: Fatima “Mimma” Medas
Infermiere: Salvatore
Su stromingiu: Linda De Palmas (burattinaia) / voce registrata da Mario Medas
CECILIA – For Launeddas in minor key – Maurizio Puxeddu
From soundtrack of “Lintu e pintu” (1992)
The musical piece CECILIA opens with a small introduction, of only two bars, which is followed by a simple melancholic melodic theme that is repeated three times, whose closings diversify, and then closes on the third repetition. Resuming for three more repetitions, but with the varied theme, the theme also ends this time on the third repetition. The same theme is changed twice only, which therefore omits the third repetition, in its place a small variation of the Bb pedal (with Bb Do three times) which closes the piece. The launeddas used are a Punt”e Organu in Bb with the third (Re brought to Reb) lowered by a semitone in the Mancosedda. La Mancosa plays a F pedal and the Tumbu the B pedal.
M.P.
EUGENIA – For Launeddas in minor key – Maurizio Puxeddu
From soundtrack of “Lintu e pintu” (1992)
Even the piece of music EUGENIA opens with a small introduction (of only three bars), which is followed by a slightly rhythmic terced theme in 6/8, which closes with a response in contrast to Dela Mancosa. The launeddas used are a Punt”e Organu in Bb with the third (Re brought to Reb) lowered by a semitone in the Mancosedda, in the Mancosa there is the lowering of the VII degree (La brought to Lab) and the Tumbu produces a pedal of Sib.
M.P.
Launeddas in B’at una femina by Piero Marras
B’AT UNA FEMINA from TUMBU
by Piero Marras
Launeddas: Maurizio Puxeddu
Also in the song B’at una femina (musical album TUMBU – 1995), Piero Marras wanted the launeddas to color a part of the song, making me use the launeddas in a different way from the classic and traditional one. Find out where in the song launeddas can be heard.
Launeddas in Sa oghe ‘e Maria by Piero Marras
SA OGHE ‘E MARIA from TUMBU by Piero Marras
Launeddas: Maurizio Puxeddu
In Sa oghe ‘e Maria, the piece by Piero Marras dedicated to the famous Sardinian singer Maria Carta, in the music album TUMBU, I played launeddas, inventing and improvising melodic lines that adapted to the harmonies of the song, not always in keeping with the possibilities traditional launeddas. Find out where in the song launeddas can be heard.