Speaking about the relationship between music and space may sound somewhat redundant (does a music which is not in any way "spatial" really exist?) since space, just like time and movement, is an essential condition of music. However, it could be useful to distinguish between those compositions or musical acts that include space in their very planning phase from those in which it is included purely out of necessity or "fatality" due to the inevitability of execution. Musicians have always played with space: the "discovery" of echo can therefore be considered a milestone in the relationship between music and space, in the same way antiphonal chant, opposing a solo voice to a choir, marked a crucial step in going beyond the natural resonance of place towards a "mirroring" of music in itself.
La volta del suono represents a significant music experience that manages to link successfully the rediscovery of places suitable for resonance experiments and the capacity of music itself to create, through the combinations of several different instruments, a spatial dimension. La volta del suono a sound event conceived by the Genoa maestro and sax player CLAUDIO CAPURRO, project was realized in the form of a live recording in the historical rooms of the Sottoporticato of the Ducal Palace in Genoa, an enormous airspace that proved not only to be a container for sounds but also a vibrant space for dialogue.
CLAUDIO CAPURRO and his adventure companions, the sax players MAURO AVANZINI e CLAUDIO LUGO and the vocalist CRISTINA ALIOTO, have come out with a performance of rare beauty, beginning by "exploring" the surrounding space through slow and reflexive sonorities before moving on to engage in rapid dialogue both with each other and with the columns and the vaults of the ancient Sottoporticato.
As in an enormous hall of mirrors, the sonorities produced by the sax trio combined with the voice of Cristina Alioto are multiplied and thrown in myriad directions only to ease down after a creative sequence of improvisation, rhythmic ostinatos, trebles, noise and percussive effects articulated by the reeds and keys of the instruments.
Walking a path between evocation of similar past experiences that contemporary jazz has offered us in recent decades and an attempt to go beyond these to forge its own distinctive path, La volta del suono skillfully manages to reformulate the relationship between space and music without impairing the listener's enjoyment.