Argentinian-Italian, Copenhagen-based composer-conductor-sax player Miguel Angel Crozzoli focuses on SCI Music – an art research project that seeks to unveil a musical landscape centered on groundbreaking scientific discoveries. His goal is to create a new perception of reality through non-conventional compositional techniques as his methodology, and scientific research and time-space diffraction as his method; and to question music to its music-ness can produce new knowledge.
«Radio Pulsars» is Crozzoli’s third composition in the SCI Music series and is performed by a 13-musicians ensemble, The Strangement Society, featuring noteworthy improvisers like double bass player Asger Thomsen, clarinetist Jonas Engel, soprano sax player Albert Cirera and tenor sax player Nana Pi. «Radio Pulsars», according to Crozzoli, relates to the experience of listening ”to the sky beating strongly throughout the night, and we see the gleaming shades of dense neutron stars. We become when they die, as we could not exist without these pulsating hearts”.
The six pieces of «Radio Pulsars» offer collective, chamber, free-improvised interplay with atmospheric yet suggestive drones. These layered and nuanced textures ebb and flow gently in deep electric-acoustic space, «Whispering Softly into the Stars» as the second piece is titled, and often ornamented by poetic comments and wordless vocalizations of vocalist Susana Nunes, most beautifully on the lyrical and fragile «We Dance, We Gleam, We Yearn». The electronics of Valeria Miracapillo add an apocalyptic, urgent undercurrent to «How Many Times Did You Think About the End?». The reeds section – Cirera, Engel, alto sax player Calum Builder, Nana Pi and tenor sax player Jon Sensmeier and bassoonist Sara Bulili – intensifies this dark vein on «Hear Me!». Crozzoli promises that this sonic journey would take the listener «towards one of the wildest and most fascinating truths of the universe», but if you doubt his mission, you can still experience the way he composes-imagines «Until the End of Our Time», the last piece, so far, in this impressive series.
Eyal Hareuveni
Miguel Angel Crozzoli (cond), Valeria Miracapillo (elec), Susana Nunes (v), Barbara Kammer (viola), Ida Nørby (c), Aurelijus Užameckis (b), Asger Thomsen (b), Albert Cirera (ss), Jonas Engel (cl), Calum Builder (as), Nana Pi (ts), Jon Sensmeier (ts), Sara Bulili (bassoon)
