Onde for string quartet (2009-10) is freely inspired by Virginia Woolf´s novel The Waves. Every chapter begins with a poetic prose, where the author depicts with deep sensitivity and precision the inner landscape where the six characters live. The waves are more related to the inner world than to water world: a ceaseless movement of thoughts and feelings, through which gradually emerge the outer events of personal and collective life. Every character’s feelings, sensations and thoughts alternate, interweave and permeate each other, to form a subtly musical tissue. As Woolf says, everybody is manifold, in any of us ring the voices and thoughts of those who are present in our lives.
In Onde I used spectral studies about male voice (from Os, for baritone and electronics, 2000-01, and about French vowels). The idea was to connect with the musicians’ voices, from the French Quartet Diotima, for whom the piece was written.
As in the book, movement is opened by an introduction, where one can hear the rhythm and breath of the following waves.
(programme note 2010)
Suonno (2003-2004) has been influenced by a previous work for solo tape, Vuoto (2003; meaning ‘empty’ in Italian, ‘flow’ in Finnish) : there I worked with four points in space and structures based on movements among four points in the space and their combinations.
In Suonno I applied the same principles at a larger scale, thinking about the opposition and complementarity of square and circle. Interwoven plans are signaled by different ways of sound production : the intention is not however to underline differences, but to let emerge a continuous flow of sound, of energies, moving from a totally inner world to the outside world, but also to an imaginary land.
The title comes from a fragment by the writer Erri De Luca:
"I realized that in Italian exist two words, dream and sleep, where the Neapolitan has just one, suonno. For us it's the same thing." (Erri De Luca, Montedidio, 2001). The word reminds of course also the Italian word "suono", which means "sound".
The work was premiered by the Arditti Quartet, at the Takefu International Music Festival (Japan) in 2004.
Migramare was commissioned for the exhibition Kotimaa / Homeland, at the Finnish Museum of Photography on 19.2.-30.4.2016, The work was installed together with Massimo Sestini’s photography of a group of migrants rescued in the Mediterranean Sea, winner of World Press Photo 2015 (http://www.massimosestini.it/wru.html).
It is a documentary work, consisting in interviews to migrants, arrived in Finland through a long journey through the Balkan route. I asked them to describe their journeys. The were from Syria and Irak. The work mixes original languages such as Arabic and Turkmen, with translations in English and Finnish.
Suonno, full video. Uusinta string quartet (20.10.2017)
Maria Puusaari and Aleksi Kotila violins, Max Savikangas viola, Markus Hohti violoncello
In between (2007) was inspired to the concept of ‘in-between’, dear to Hanna Arendt: it indicates what stays between two realities, two persons. But it is also relates to human voice, to communication. It may mean what unites, but also what separates. I imagined it as an almost physical space, an intermediate space where music happens: you can think about the ‘in-between’ between composer and world(s), composer and musicians, musicians and public and so on.
Space, as in many of my works, is organized according to a precise disposition of the instruments and musicians on stage.
(Concert programme 2008)
Ohnfad (2000) for female voice and fix media was composed in Paris at Ccmix (Centre de Création Musicale Iannis Xenakis). Part III of Spazi, cycle of five vocal pieces (1-5 voices) and electronics (2000-2005), it is based on Saint-John Perse’s poem Vents (Winds).
The title is a nonsense coming from the letter « o » which plays a central role in the work: in Perse’s poetics it also hints to the concept of isolation, round – closed space; far from meaning withdrawing into oneself, it is rather an open space for the mind.
The landay is an intimate and anonymous form of Afghan poetry, written by women who are not allowed to write in a public way. The landay ‘Kiss’ hit my imagination, as it questions secrecy and silence, and the deep need to express oneself. Landay also means in Pasthun “short poisonous snake,” these poems are generally short and get straight to the point.
(2015)
