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

LISTEN ON YOUTUBE > 

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.

ISLANDS – Musical performance by Maurizio Puxeddu for ILLADOR

ISLANDS – Musical performance by Maurizio Puxeddu
Traditional Sardinian musical instruments used: launeddas, sulittu, bena, bena ‘e corru, ghitarra, corru marinu, trunfa, pitiolus, ischiglittos

It is an initiative created within the ILLADOR photographic exhibition by Marina Anedda, set up in suggestive contexts.

“Retracing the places described by the German philosopher Ernst Jünger, who in 1954, during a trip to Sardinia, stopped in Villasimius, fascinated by the primeval essence of the place, the author of “Illador”, through intense photographic research he autonomously reinterprets the the work of the philosopher, using black and white to prevent the use of color from altering the philological sense of the operation.”
From www.emigratisardi.com

SPOLETO – 12 July 2002
in conjunction with the Festival of Two Worlds

TORTOLI ‘ – September 14, 2002
Museum of Contemporary Art Su Logu De S’Iscultura

Spoleto – Maurizio Puxeddu with sardinian guitar


A text of almost twenty years ago, from 2002, accompanying the performance.

INSULAE

Il primo pensiero va’ all’acqua.
Che lambisce le terre.
Acqua di mare duro contro la roccia.

Instancabile nel sovrumano scontro all’ultimo grano di materia,
all’ultima goccia di lagrima salina.
Dove l’abisso si prende la rivincita,
su quei natali incandescenti ed infuocati.
Di eruzioni e di lave.
Fumanti di liquido esalato.
Con molta calma, dando tempo al tempo.
Nei secoli e nei millenni. Erodendo.
Perché la roccia, ormai raffreddata,
immobile,
non può fuggire e avere scampo.
L’acqua. Trova la sua vendetta.
Nelle isole il tempo è un altro.

Scoprendole sulla linea del tramonto
mutano in approdo di cabotaggi stanchi.
Riferimento per navigatori di antiche rotte.
Salvagente
nella perdita dell’orizzonte liquido.
Poi si aprono mondi interni.
Possibili spazi limitati e limitanti,
ma profondi di conoscenza del se.
Dove scavare interiormente.
Quelle più piccole,
si contengono in uno sguardo.
La loro storia, in un pensiero,
in una sensazione.
Dalla creazione all’oggi.
Quelle più grandi,
ricche di storie tortuose,
riempiono i polmoni di vento profumato.
Generose di sole.
Ma tutte hanno il sentore
della condivisione
della particolare condizione geografica con gli altri, che vivono in altre isole.
Solitudine e separazione,
mista a condivisione.
Situazione ricercabile.
Consapevolezza del non essere solo.
Nelle isole il tempo è un altro.

Ma il primo pensiero va’ all’acqua.
Che lambisce le terre.
M.P.