Sfumature Sonore
Nuances of Sound
Dissonances Between Tradition and Innovation
Original music: Luigi Polimeni and Chiara Rinciari
Texts and poetic performance: Massimo Barilla
Translation of texts into English: Elizabeth Grech
Dancer: Aurora Galteri
Choreography: Sarah Lanza
Piano, theremin, marranzano, and synth: Luigi Polimeni
Guitars, synth, and sound design: Chiara Rinciari
Stage design: Aldo Zucco
A multidisciplinary performance of music, performative poetry, and dance.
Nenti nasci cchiù
Nuddu mori cchiù
(Nothing comes to life anymore
No one leaves this world anymore)
“Sfumature Sonore is more than an artistic performance — it is a full sensory experience, a convergence of worlds that touch, collide, and ultimately merge into a new language that goes beyond interdisciplinarity itself: beyond music, beyond words, beyond the body.”
Interwoven Languages
Sfumature Sonore is an ongoing dialogue, a dynamic tension between different universes and languages.
It simmers like magma, at once sulphureous and fragrant, wild and delicate, perpetually anchored to the moment just before the eruption — a breath away from the breaking point.
Suspended between harmony and sonic edge, body and word, energy and life, it unfolds through the notes and breaths of Luigi Polimeni and Chiara Rinciari.
Amid this continual recomposition of forces, where ancestral echoes meet synthetic sounds — evoking a new ritual electroacoustic music — the poetic text and songs in the dialect of Reggio Calabria by Massimo Barilla take root and bloom with a secular transcendence, in the impossible quest to grasp the deepest meaning of a bond that exists beyond time and space.
Loosely inspired by contemporary physics, it evokes an entanglement of the soul, where matter, sound, and spirit are inevitably intertwined.
The notion that souls, like distant particles, remain connected by an invisible bond beyond space and time finds expression in a poetry that translates it into resonant flesh.
In the living body that vibrates and resounds through Sarah Lanza’s choreography, inhabited by the pulsating movements of Aurora Galteri.
Sound Textures
A surreal atmosphere, where classical tradition merges with electronic innovation, creating a unique and immersive sensory experience. Around and alongside the piano, a range of instruments – from the theremin, iconic for its mysterious and fluid tones, to the marranzano, whose vibrant metallic timbres lend an almost folkloric and primitive character – are all enveloped in surrounding, resonant frequencies.
The classical sounds of a prelude drift through the air, only for the atmosphere to shift: the synths awaken, and a subtle wave of electronic bass begins to permeate the space, barely perceptible at first, then ever more present. With its ethereal, airy legato, the theremin seems to speak an unknown language, blending seamlessly with the delicate classical melodies.
Alongside this, the marranzano, with its characteristic tinkling, brings echoes of folk tradition, reimagined through the interplay of synths and electro-acoustic transformations. The guitars do not transcend mere accompaniment, becoming instruments of tension, with distortions that intertwine and dissolve like waves of sound in the air, creating a striking contrast between the rounded warmth of classical music and the angular edge of electronics.
The interaction between acoustic and electronic melodies is flawless: each instrument converses with the others, forming a constantly evolving sonic landscape. The acoustic voices of the piano and marranzano are carried into an ocean of synthetic sounds, flowing like impetuous waves, yet never overwhelming.
Gradually, the sonic fabric builds toward an explosive tension, as synthesizers and electric guitars take the lead, while the piano and theremin continue to trace a melodic thread, like a star shimmering amid the chaos of an expanding universe. The audience is swept into a vortex of sound, traveling between past and future, between serenity and intensity, until reaching a sonic climax where everything merges into a single wave – a wave that slowly fades, leaving all suspended in an almost magical silence.
