alessandra giura longo
contemporary
AGL discovered contemporary music when she attended the chamber music class taught by Michele Lomuto at the Conservatory of Matera, and she immediately made this her repertoire of choice.
She studied its techniques and its aesthetics, earning a degree in the Disciplines of Music at the University of Bologna with a thesis on the contribution of the interpreter in the Musical Theater of Georges Aperghis (in particular, in the 14 Récitations for solo voice). She has also focused on the pedagogy of this repertoire, teaching various courses and inserting contemporary music as an essential part of the chamber music program at the conservatories where she has worked. She is, in fact, firmly convinced that is indispensible for all artists to have experience with the contemporary period and reflect in one’s personal interpretative choices the creative view of the composers of one’s time, in addition to that of composers of the past.
The wish to expand the boundaries of her own music-making also led her to explore the study of the voice (though she had always sung in various vocal ensembles, with repertoires ranged from madrigals to contemporary music), and she began to insert vocal pieces in alternation with works for flute in her performances of contemporary music.
This gave rise to the project Souffle, a series of performances in which she plays five different flutes (from the bass flute to piccolo to recorders), sings and acts, at times in collaboration with other musicians (such as Juliane Laake and Michele Lomuto); the spectacles are at times supported by visual images. In these performances, she often executes both Sequenza I for flute and Sequenza III for voice by Luciano Berio; Giacinto Scelsi’s CKCKC, for a singer accompanying herself on the mandolin; Cardini 1973-solfeggio parlante by Paolo Castaldi; ?Corporel byVinko Globokar; some of the Récitations for solo voice by Georges Aperghis; Vermont counterpoint by Steve Reich; in addition to well-known contemporary compositions for solo flute (Petrassi, Donatoni, Stockhausen, Varése, Pousser, Takemitsu, Matsudaira, etc.) and pieces dedicated to her (Massimo Privitera, Emanuel Frazão, Christian Cassinelli and others).
In the realm of contemporary music, a fundamental collaboration has been with the American singer Candace Smith, with whom AGL has worked since 1988, both as a duo and in ensembles with other musicians. Together they founded the ensemble Selenikos, which debuted with the program “Pierrot ed altri lunatici” based on Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire, performed without a conductor, and the duo program “Deux stèles orientées”. On behalf of Club Satie, they were co-artistic directors of the festival MiniMus at the Teatro delle Moline in Bologna (1992 and 1993). They have created numerous programs of contemporary music, early music, and both together (including pieces composed expressly for them, in particular by Massimo Privitera and Christian Cassinelli). They have also presented concerts of songs from the 1920s and 1930s, and recorded music written for them by the celebrated jazz musician Paolo Fresu (for Owl Records of Paris).
Other important collaborations in the field of contemporary music include those with the Laboratorio Lirico at the Theater of Alessandria for the production of La ballata d’amore e morte dell’alfiere Cristoph Rilke by Siegfrid Matthus (directed by Gabriele Vacis); the workshop with David Cossin and the Modular Ensemble of Cagliari for the production of Drumming by Steve
In 2013, inspired by Erica Zingano 's words copybook, she creates Sussurrami, vocal improvvisation performance for one listener only.