Works
Solo & Duo
two ludes for a dreaming flute
for flute and piano
In two movements (Wilmington, DE - 2023) 7 min.
“The world is older than the gods. Before time was born, the earth was already filling space. It bled, it felt pleasure; the earth was the only god. In those days things themselves had power. It was things that happened. Whereas now the gods turn everything into words, illusions, threats. But the gods can only make trouble, join things together or pull them apart. Not touch them, not change them. They came too late.”
Excerpt from "Oedipus & Tiresias" - Cesare Pavese's Dialogues with Leucò.
elegia sulle quattro note pesanti
for violoncello
(New York - 2024) 5 min.
This elegy is a tribute to the name of Bach - 'the four heavy notes'.
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pressioni [libro terzo]
for solo piano
In four movements (Washington, DC – 2023) 25 min.
Pressioni is a cycle that plays with the very percussive nature of the piano. In a certain sense, my approach to the instrument is anti-Impressionistic in terms of defying any reference to that idiomatic palette of gestures and embellishments (hence the title).
This third book is a journey on chiaroscuro inspired by the visionary writings of Pavel Florensky, Cesare Pavese, and Rainer Maria Rilke, 20th-century voices of a haunted humanity. The piano textures undergo a process of progressive purification from the harmonic clashes of the first movement, reaching a final stage where triadic combinations float over trance-like rhythms. That inner division of the ‘flaking soul’ denounced by Florensky is here symbolically recomposed by the ’harmonization’ of opposite registers.
“Eternal fear, cold, and stale humidity
emanated from the wounds of the flaking soul.”
[From Florensky’s Mystical Interpretation of Psalm 125]
“For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror,
that we are still able to bear,
and we revere it so,
because it calmly disdains to destroy us.”
[From Rilke’s Duino Elegies, no.1]
pressioni [libro secondo]
for solo piano
In three movements (Baltimore, MD - 2022) 15 min.
This second book is contrapuntally static until the Finale, as an attempt to retain all expressive power for the explosive end.
Sinuous, Straight, Solar
for soprano sax and piano
Written for Tae Ho Hwang (Baltimore, MD - 2019) 8 min.
With this piece, I felt the urgency to express the conglomerate of violence, dread, and anxiety caused by the outburst of terrorism.
shades of abulia [III]
for cello and piano
Composed for Hang Liu (Baltimore, MD - 2018) 5 min.
This 'non-Opera' is originally inspired by Andrej Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979).
This interlude is the core of the entire work. I borrowed the neurological term ‘abulia’ to describe the radical implosion of the human will in its structural capacity to make decisions.
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shades of abulia [in me, per me]
for soprano and piano
Written for Katelyn Grace Jackson (Baltimore, MD – 2018) 5 min.
This ‘non-Opera’ is originally inspired by Andrej Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979). In the movie, Stalkers are devoted to guiding people into the Zone, a surrealist place where men can discover themselves and potentially fulfill their innermost desires. Conversations on the meaning of existence reveal Tarkovsky’s metaphysical sense, with scriptural and poetic references throughout the journey.
The work opens with the Zone voicing the meaning of their enterprise.
– Text by Matteo Belli –
In me, per me,
through me, within me, in some shortcut
– they think –
desires come true,
that somewhere here, inside me,
their desires come true.
And they come inward, toward me, here inside me,
(through me, within me, through me)
to believe in me and themselves.
And they come.
In me, per me, into the Zone.
Breaking the Standard
for solo piano
(Baltimore, MD - 2018) 2 min.
This 'number' plays with the imitation and distortion of musical patterns from various styles.
