The great musical personality of Ben Frost in an unprecedented guise in San Fedele in a Duo project with the winner of the 2016 San Fedele Prize Francesco Fabris. The two artists, residing in Iceland, in March 2021 conducted a complex field recording operation in several expeditions during the eruption of the Fagradalsfjall volcano. Thus was born “Vakning” (Awakening), a work produced for the Room40 label, world premiere in Milan in the form of a spatialized live set with the acusmonium SATOR. These are recordings taken at close range of the volcano that highlight the aspect of the living geology of the Earth, a living planet, with a dynamic and overflowing matter, in a nexus in which the liquid rock becomes solid, in which the pressure from the interior makes its way to the surface of the planet, simultaneously providing destruction and virgin landscapes.

In the first part Michelangeli Dream, the succession of six acousmatic pieces by the finalists of the Prix San Fedele 2020, in a single 30-minute suite, six electronic studios of five minutes each based on the art of sound by pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli.
Alberto Maria Gatti begins with touches and resonances, with reference to the recording of the sonata in B minor by Scarlatti, creating a series of sound environments that approach the resonances that are formed in the soundboard of the piano. Following, Mists and States of Time by Leonardo Bonetti, with a clear spectral setting, metamorphosis of Debussy’s Brouillards piano recording into a complex slow movement of harmonic and disharmonic layers with only the preservation of sounds originals at the top of the piano. The duo Remo De Vico and Mariangela Di Tommaso, with Ex Machina takes up a recording of Mouvement taken from Debussy’s Images. Study of sound sculpture that updates the piano score with hints of electroacoustic matrix in a poetic and dreamlike vision. Halfway through the suite, Geronimo Cappelli tries his hand at the Presto Finale of the sonata n. 2 by Chopin. This time the electronic studio orders the succession of some fragments placed in loop with constant progressions arriving to the last note of the Taken in the low register followed by an electronic coda animated by a background of rhythmic wrecks. Massimo Colombo chooses a refined ambient context to introduce his studio that integrates a large material taken from Ravel’s Concerto in G, in particular the long ones sequences of trills, is the most immersive moment of the suite, with a suspended temporality. The final is by the winner of the San Fedele 2020 Prize, Mattia Loris Siboni, with a study on Cloches à travers les feuilles from Images by Debussy. Tripartite piece that deals with the thematic of the threshold of silence in the image evoked by the title: bells through the leaves. The first section presents materials with substitution levels that are distant and unrelated to the original source, a gestural climate prevails, with wide breaths and phrasing that prepare the second section. The focus is on the part of the leaves. The central part is shorter, true turning point of the piece, in which the source is revealed. The last part follows in which materials with primary surrogates dominate, it is the static moment of the study in which however micro variations emerge that make the material organic and renew it listening.

BIO

BEN FROST Born in Melbourne, Australia, and residing in Reykjavík, Iceland, since 2005, Frost has been composing minimalist, instrumental and experimental music, with influences ranging from classic minimalism to punk rock and metal. His earliest releases include guitar albums Steel Wound (2003) and School of Emotional Engineering (2004). Subsequently, Theory of Machines (2007) marked a radical shift towards more edgy and aggressive music with By The Throat (2009). In 2011, as part of a collaboration with Brian Eno and fellow Icelandic composer Daníel Bjarnason, Frost released Solaris, a conceptual album that echoed the music from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film of the same name. In 2014, after signing a deal with the British record label Mute Records, Frost released the critically acclaimed and decidedly more rhythmic album Aurora. In 2017 Frost traveled to Chicago to record The Center Cannot Hold with Steve Albini. In addition to his studio albums, Frost has collaborated with contemporary dance companies Chunky Move, the Icelandic Dance Company and British choreographer Wayne McGregor. He composed the music for Wayne McGregor’s 2010 production FAR. In addition to his solo work, Frost has often collaborated with other musicians, including composer Nico Muhly, Valgeir Sigurðsson, Björk, Tim Hecker, Colin Stetson, Daníel Bjarnason and the American rock group Swans, contributing to the albums as a producer, engineer of studio and performer. In 2013, in his first directorial role, he premiered a musical theater adaptation of Iain Banks’ novel The Wasp Factory. In 2015, in collaboration with Paul Haslinger, he created the soundtrack for Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege. Two years later, he made the soundtrack for the Super Dark Times movie. In the same year, he premiered a new installation, titled Incoming, with Richard Mosse and Trevor Tweeten at London’s Barbican Center, now touring around the world. Frost participated in the recording of Swans’ 2019 album Leaving Meaning and joined their touring band. From 2017 to 2020, Frost created the soundtrack for all three seasons of Netflix’s German sci-fi thriller Dark.

FRANCESCO FABRIS Audiovisual artist, composer, musician and sound engineer. He works with multimedia installations, live electronics, AVL performances and music productions. He has released on the labels Bedroom Community, Room40, Inni, Until Riot and performed around the world with solo and collaborative projects in clubs, festivals, galleries and theaters. His personal work stems from a wide range of interests mainly associated with procedures that describe sound and visual forms starting from a naturalistic context, but often manipulating the results with mechanical and digital elements. The main ideas gravitate towards the exploitation of field recordings, noise, acoustic ecology, sound synthesis, audio spatialization and data sonification as compositional tools. He has contributed musically to soundtracks for Netflix productions “DARK”, “Against the Ice”, “The Old Guard”, Apple TV + series “Defending Jacob”, Amazon Studios “Without Remorse”, ABC “For Life” , “Fresh” and many others including video games, plays, dance performances and operas. He lives and works in Reykjavík (Iceland) at the famous Greenhouse Studios and has collaborated with artists including Valgeir Sigurðsson, Ben Frost, Swans, Jónsi, Alex Somers, Dustin O’Halloran, Atli Örvarsson, Hauschka, Damien Rice, JFDR, Daniel Pioro , Liam Byrne, Nadia Sirota, Sandro Mussida, 404.zero and many others. He is the founder of Outer Fields, a container for libraries, sound maps and plug-ins based on field recording and is the regional representative in Iceland for Quiet Park International. Among the awards: first prize residency PRIX CIME 2017 (USA), first prize “S. Fedele Musica 2016 “, first prize” DE.MO./MOVIN’UP 2015 “, finalist” Premio Claudio Abbado 2015 “, first prize T.A.T. (Rome 2011) and received the nomination for “Producer of the Year” at the Icelandic Music Awards 2022. His productions and performances are characterized by a complex sound design based on concrete and modular recordings, extensive use of low frequencies, fragmented harmonies , noise and manipulation of acoustic instruments together with concrete and generative visual contents. He graduated with honors in Electronic Music and New Technologies at the “A.Steffani” Conservatory of Castelfranco Veneto and graduated in Contemporary Writing and Production at the CPM Institute in Milan. He specialized at the SME Studio of Electroacoustic Music, the Academy of Music and the Intermediate Art Department of Krakow.