When did you first encounter music ?
Could you inform us about the main steps of your music training?
Once I was very keen on classical music and I
was member of the association “gioventù musicale” (music youth), so I attended to
all the concerts at the Verdi concert
hall of Milan Conservatory.
Later I started to play piano and I enrolled in
the course of electronic music held by Angelo Paccagnini. He was a great music teacher and a wide-opened musician
who liked improvisation and every kind
of music experience. I think that I owe my present status of musician and
teacher to his way of being. Probably other teachers would have brought me to
stop my studies.
Angelo Paccagnini
Composer, Executor and Teacher , do you think
that these three roles are perfectly balanced in your music activity or do you
think they cold be better distributed ?
Teaching is very nice, I always learn something
in my relationship with my pupils they are often very brilliant.
Composer and Executor are normally different
roles in Western tradition, but I
normally melt them because I need to be both, considering that I love working
through improvisation, which is something like an instantaneous composition.
Do you see teaching like a
source of inspiration and learning?
Off Course, the relationship with my pupils
brings to a mutual exchange that gives me the opportunity to stay up-to-date.
This kind of relationship is bidirectional
the more you teach the more you learn.
I think it would be interesting to spend a few
words on the evolution of your relationship with Milan Conservatory from student
to teacher.
My relationship with Paccagnini was based on
consideration and friendship so he took me with him, as an assistant, even
during his summer advanced courses. After my diploma I was a trainee so I
continued to stay at the Conservatory to teach to the students of the first
year.
When Paccagnini became the director of Milan
Could you speck us about “Esemble Elettroacustico” and “Uroboro Orchestra”?
Could you speck us about “Esemble Elettroacustico” and “Uroboro Orchestra”?
Since long we started a course of improvisation
with electronic instruments, at the beginning I did it with Gaetano Liguori ,who
also had been a student of Angelo, but
it was a problem for the Conservatory to have a course with 2 teachers so I had
to go on alone with the students of our department.
You can see some of the results of this work on
my youtube channel.
What kind of role has improvisation in your music and in your activity as a composer?
An important role I think, I always try to find
a balance between the opposed polarities of composition and improvisation.
Futuro Antico
Which were the effects of Milano music effervescence
during the seventies on your music?
It was a time full of life and new ideas, I was
thinking that it was time to free ourselves from the conditioning of
avant-garde music which had become academy, later everything returned slowly to
normality and monotony, luckily today I rediscovered in young people the wish
to go back to creative liberty.
When did you start with electronic music? And
when dates back your love for African an Middle-East sounds?
Probably at the end of the seventies when I
bought an electric piano and started to listen to contemporary composers like
Berio and Stockhausen but also to the music of Ravi Shankar and similars. In
the meantime I started also to listen to jazz and musicians like Jimi Hendrix
with a great primordial force and sounds that were not so distant from cultured
avant-garde.
In 1973 I bought my Moog.
Which are your present
feelings towards your solo works
Watertube/ringspiel;Riflessi;Scorrevole 3/Fluttuazioni and Correnti
Magnetiche?
I always like them, and sometimes
I listen to them with pleasure.
Could you tell us extensively
about the activity of the artistic nucleus “Correnti Magnetiche”?
The group started after my meeting with Mario
Canali and from our mutual passion for digital art and symbolism.
At the beginning I prepared the videos in basic
and the music for Mario, but later we thought that it was better to share the
tasks and so I continued only with music. We were developing the concept of
collective art so we included in the group Flavia Alman & Sabine Reiff for
the visual part and Tommaso Leddi, Gabin Dabirè and Maurizio Dehò for the
music.
We started to do live concerts
where Mario was painting on a drawing board connected to a projector following
our improvisations.
With concerts, videos and installations
we were everywhere and we gained many awards. At the Ars Electronica Festival
we unbelievably won the second prize
after John Lasseter of Pixar who had behind him a big organisation and the
money of Steve Jobs.
Unfortunately Mario gave up , tired of digital complications, and moved to Laurel Canyon
(Los Angeles
Anyhow we keep in contact.
And what about the birth of
Futuro Antico?
After the return of Walter Maioli from a 4
years long Eastern trip we met and we
started to play together (first Lp of Futuro Antico) after a while Gabin Dabirè
, who Walter had known in Nepal, joined and there was a sudden harmony between
us.
Is it correct to consider Futuro Antico as a natural evolution of Aktuala?
I think so, considering that Walter was the
mind behind Aktuala.
Futuro Antico started with auto-production of 2
cassettes can you tell us the story behind?
We created a cultural association and we produced cassettes to be sold during
our concerts, we were helped by a crew of friends and passionate collaborators.
Why was your first album
published in Brasil?
Because we were contacted by the producer
Antonio Petikov ,a Brasilian of Russian origins, who was very fond of our work.
Are you satisfied by recent represses of this first album and the cassette by the label Blacksweat?
Are you satisfied by recent represses of this first album and the cassette by the label Blacksweat?
Yes a lot, also because it was a
big success, they are doing already the third repress in one year and they are
preparing also the CD version.They are young and very correct and like ADN they
do it because they love music and not for business, as myself.
It was made in a very limited edition as a test. We were recently contacted by a label ofFlorence
And what can you tell us about
the lost CD “Intonazioni Archetipe”?
It was made in a very limited edition as a test. We were recently contacted by a label of
Futuro Antico is a group in “hibernation” or do
you think that its artistic adventure has come to an end?
We are trying to organize some concerts in
spring 2015 with the help of Blacksweat so probably the hibernation will be
over.
You were also a stable member of Doubling
Riders, can you tell us how you joined this already existing group and how you
contributed to its evolution?
We came in contact through Marco
Veronesi of ADN , we were in the same label, and I licked very much the concept
of this group based on distant collaborations of different artists. So I
started to collaborate and I was part of the group.
Doubling Riders anticipated the internet era ,
but at the time the magnetic tapes were sent through post accompanied by a
letter and all was very slow.
Are you also, like Franceso
Paladino, considering Garama like the more accomplished work of the group?
Also the double Lp on ADN is very nice.
The Doubling Riders
Could you speack us about the project Swimmers Quartet /Quintet?
Could you speack us about the project Swimmers Quartet /Quintet?
The project was conceived by Alzek Misheff a painter performer of great
energy who involved me, Maurizio Barbetti viola, Rocco Parisi bass clarinet, Maurizio
Dehò violin and many other collaborators for some concerts like Charles Amirkhanian,
Theodosii Spassov and the great Don
Buchla.
RICCARDO WITH WALTER MAIOLI
How important do you find the
collaboration from a compositive and esecutive point of view with other
musicians?
Very important because I believe
in collective art and in the meetings of persons who share love for sounds and
are open to every development.
I also like to play alone, but in
this case I know that what I’m doing is foreseeable. Much more exciting and risky is to be contaminated by others and even by
other aesthetics.
Sergio Armaroli Mario De Leo
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Yuval Avital Ahmed Fakrun Pietro Pirelli
During your long music career you collaborated with many musicians, some of these collaborations found their way to a phonographic support ( Sergio Armaroli, Mario De Leo, Ahmed Fakrun, Italo Bertolasi) other not(Yuval Avital,Ahmed Ben Diab, Pietro Pirelli etc. etc). Did these musicians broaden your already wide music frontiers?
Off Course, lately I’m working with my students that are coming from the techno-noise and other kind of experiences.. and even if sometimes I feel perplexed I think they are animated by my same passion.
What kind of music do you listen when you are not at work and which are the musicians you consider essential for your music knowledge?
My teacher Angelo Paccagnini and: Luciano Berio, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Miles Davis, Gustav Mahler, J.S. Bach, Igor Strawinski, Bela Bartok, Franz Listz, Keith Jarrett, Terry Riley, John Hassel, Led Zeppelin, Lou Reed, Third ear band, Arab, Saharian and Iranian music ecc....
These are only the first names that come to my mind.
A new CD with Sergio Armaroli and Maurizio Dehò a very good ensemble, I think. Next spring we will try to organize some concerts od Futuro Antico.
And than we’ll see……
some video
Angelo Paccagnini Underground
