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alessandra giura longo

letter to a stranger

Letter to a stranger

22 solos from Song Books by John Cage

Alessandra Giura Longo: voice

Francesca Massa: dance

Alessandro Olla: live electronics, video

Dedicated to Cathy Berberian and Simone Rist, the 90 solos for voice collected in Song Books, were written by John Cage between august and october 1970.
Each solo belongs to one of four categories: song, song using electronics, theatre and theatre using electronics.
The texts, where a real text is sung, are extraits from writings by the composer Erik Satie and by the philospher and naturalist Henry David Thoreau, both considered as mentors by Cage himself. Cage asks for an interpreter with a natural folk voice and and asks her (or him) to take her’s choice about the number of solos, their order in the performance, (giving the possibility of superimposition too), the kind of amplification or manipulation of the sound giving only little suggestions about it. This choices set the final form of the work, giving it a new and original aspect for each performance.
Our vocal performance consists in the interpretation of 22 solos, some of them commented by danse improvisation, with some video images that displayed some solo’s scores, Cage’s paintings or the realization of some theatre solos.
The title, Letter to a stranger, is Cage definition of the work of a composer.