The listening itinerary exploring the theme of immersive thresholds, or the gradualness of the listener’s perceptual and meditative involvement in the immersive acoustic space of the San Fedele auditorium, continues. The focus of the second evening is a live set by Birmingham DJ Anthony Child (1971), known as Surgeon. The British musician, in addition to his long experience in the techno scene, carries on, with care as if for a secret garden, a very personal production of experimental music using modular synthesizers including the legendary Buchla Music Easel and recently instruments from Soma Laboratory. Child’s research is directed on two complementary sides with the goal of creating an intimate and dreamlike ambient fabric. On one side is the insistence on the improvisational mode to achieve that unique musical moment in which the artist aims not to get in the way of the sonic flow that comes from the interaction between the performer and the instruments used while at the same time, as he writes, “embracing and celebrating all those unexpected musical events that emerge in performance.” On the other side, Anthony Child makes abundant use of rhythmic figures of minimalist origin or, as in the admirable improvisation Count to 5 in the Somatic Loop, from 2021, homogeneous textures composed of droning snorities in the lower register, in the likeness of much of the electronic output of the later Stockhausen (Oktophonie).

Opening the evening will be Chiara Trentin (1991), the youngest musician in the review, already on the San Fedele stage with Francesco Messina for a performance of Wet Meadows of Monte Analogo. This time as soloist on six-string electric cello with live electronics. It is a 35-minute suite entitled Violoncellula, reprising some of the material from her first CD in 2022, produced under the auspices of her maestro, Giovanni Sollima. The musician writes on the cover of her disc, “There is a structural mixture of different eras and a constant overlapping of themes and harmonies that come from classical music (“IV suite” by J.S. Bach for solo cello) and jazz standards (“All the things you are”), also in the improvisation coexist timbres akin to the viola da gamba tradition with typically glitch and sound-on-sound sounds, in an attempt to expand the expressive possibilities of the cello in the evolution of contemporary musical genres.”