One of the most significant exponents of ambient music, the Canadian Scott Morgan, alias Loscil, will present a performance starting from the material of the latest work, Clara, published by Kranky, accompanied by an audiovisual interaction. Loscil’s musical style is devoid of mannerisms, he focuses on a reduced sound palette from which he proceeds to elaborate musical organisms that are sometimes complex but always formally clearly identifiable and open to the emotional dimension. In the compositional work of the Canadian artist, the component of active listening to music has an important place which goes beyond the communicative aspect of ideas or narrative elements and refers to that hidden magic which mysteriously motivates the attention and curiosity of the listener. At the same time, Loscil considers the creative activity linked to the subjective need for expression, also the result of the artist’s passion for the art of sounds, capable of creating a special interaction with the listeners. In an interview Loscil points out:

“in my job, the listener is essential, I need patient listeners who are willing to let the music take their place. This can’t happen if you’re sitting listening through a computer speaker. I think it’s very difficult to get people’s attention in our time. We live in a world of distractions and the attentive and engaged listener is an endangered species. Without active listeners, I fear all music becomes transparent and meaningless.”

Clara from 2022 is an extraordinary meditation on the theme of light, also in relation to the shadow and its rarefaction. The collection is based on a single three-minute composition performed by a 22-piece string orchestra in Budapest. The recording was worked on the lathe and engraved on a 7″ vinyl in a single copy, “striped and damaged to add texture and color”, from the sampling of the sounds, Loscil then gave shape to the entire album.
Despite the deliberately limited initial palette, the compositions evoke a sense of infinity, opening up and passing through luminous depths. On the one hand, songs with a sleepy movement, while others slowly evolve in sparkling plays of shadows, sometimes evoking the music of the spheres, with dark and opaque areas and radiant silences.

The evening will be introduced by Lukas Lauermann, Viennese cellist and composer, lover of the purity of instrumental sound in discrete interaction with electronics. His approach is sometimes linked to improvisation, sometimes more abstract, the result of a subtle and poetic reworking of the musical material almost always coming from live recordings of the cello. His latest production, Interploitation, was published by the Austrian label Col Legno, a renowned house active in the field of contemporary music which counts in its catalog recordings by Helmut Lachenmann, W. Mitterer, Pierre Boulez, S. Sciarrino.