![Xxxiiº Concorso Internationale Luigi Russolo [2CD]](/img/p/6/8/4/684.jpg)
In March 2010, Le Bruit De La Neige Festival organized the annual Luigi Russolo - Rossana Maggia Competition at the Faverges Soierie. The aim was to promote the electroacoustic music of young composers (under 35 years old). 60 composers from 28 countries participated in this contest. We selected 15 pieces received the maximum votes.
Bruitism is a movement of sound art that was born the 9th of March 1913 when the painter and composer Luigi Russolo published the manifesto "L'Arte dei Rumori" (The Art of Noises), inviting the people to appreciate the complex sounds from nature and the industrial environment. This was as an important paradigm shift in contemporary music as would come later with the musique concrete of Pierre Schaeffer or 4'33", the silent work by John Cage.
First Prize Luigi Russolo: Yota Kobayashi (Japan) “Kakusei” (for hexaphonic tape) 12:00
The title means "awakening" in Japanese, this piece is an acousmatic rendering of a dream, and the self-realizations that follow from the act of awakening. The dream world consists of two primary settings: the first is associated with aspects of ritual, with recurring horn-calls announcing new fragmented states, the second setting is subaquatic, with traces of the ritual horns now submerged and distorted.
Second Prize Luigi Russolo: Elia Marios Joannou (Cyprus) “Vertumnus” 11:35
Third Prize Luigi Russolo: Valérie Delaney (Canada) “La cité de verre” 08:00
Inspired by "The Foundation Cycle" written by Isaac Asimov. Surrounded by the translucent walls, I was going down the staircase that leads me to my heart.
Mention Rossana Maggia: Sergy Khismatov (Russia) “Spring relapse” 08:00
The concept of this piece recalls a sensational crisis of nature - "spring renaissance" - in electrified urban and virtual spaces. Senses sharpen here and can easily overwhelm, thus leading to abrupt and mostly mindless changes of mood.
Mention Franco G. Maffina: Sebastian Peter (Germany) “Schatten” 11:34
It's the adaptation of the first chapter of the novel "Rohstoff" (Raw Material) by J?rg Fauser that tell us about Istanbul in the 70s in relation to the main character Harry Gelb and his inner world. The piece begins with an acoustic zoom into the city from far away above. As the piece continues, the listener is drawn deeper into the world of the writer and meets his shadows: the opium, the shadow and the doubt.
Special Mention of the jury: Joan Bages Rubi (Spain) “Signes vers l’autre” 11:21
This piece expresses the inability to get out of one's self to imagine the world around, if it's the city or something else. The body and mind can facilitate communication in a human community, but if they don't work as they should, it's like an altered state of consciousness. The city is something made of human singularity and human diversity.
Erdem Helvacioğlu (Turkey) “Wandering around the city” 08:12
This is an aural description of Istanbul, a city of more than 10 millions inhabitants. The piece contains various field recordings from all over the city including traffic noise, children playing around, sound from bazaars, sounds of ships and various transportation vehicles. These recordings are blended with both textural sounds and processed versions of the original location recordings.
Ka-Ho Cheung (Hong Kong) “La possibilité de l’Metropia” 10:13
Based on field trip recordings in metro systems around the world, this piece hybridizes acousmatic, soundscape and documentary elements into a mini-trilogy, reflecting the composer's sonic experience and the auditory cultures in those mechanical landscapes.
Andrea Santini (Italy) “Venetian sketches” 09:29
The majority of the materials on tape are derived from original field recordings taken in Venice between April 2007 and June 2008 with a budget field recorder. Despite its somehow inferior sound quality, super pocket-sized technology provides an ideal tool for capturing unexpected and unpredictable sound events. The third and last section is inspired by the sounds of church bells (more than a hundred are still active in the city).
Jean François Primeau (Canada) “Sous nos cités” 11:39
This piece is an extract from the work "Modernité", composed in 2008-2009 in Leicester (UK). I used real urban and impressionist portrait to create a vision of modern life in the city, a place where humans continously rub elbows with artificial and mechanical devices. A journey into the working system which control city life over the centuries.
Damien Depannemaeck (France) “Stadt Test” 08:26
The city represents us across the ages, epochs, day and night. Our imagination is the mental navigation through ideas which give birth to scenes and images. The city is something poetic and reassuring, roaring and terrifying, characterized by the density of population but also opposition to the wilderness.
Dohi Moon (South Korea) “Perhaps, reminisce” (Bb clarinet and electroacoustics) 11:09
The education that I had for 20 years in Korea would not allow me to think about music as a part of the meaning of my life and my culture. I have another culture that I have gone through since I left Korea, because no one can change how they grew up, one can only add, mix and recreate their own culture and personality. Perhaps this piece allows me to reminisce of myself, and for the next step to move forward.
Stefan Fraunberger (Austria) “Peshawar 03.09.2009” 08:00
The walk through the market region of Peshawar during friday praying times shows in a very significant way various realities of understanding culture and religion concentrated in a small spot of urban life. There is not just one heterogenous idea of reality, but dozens of them at the same time and place, put into the playground of acoustic reality by bad and very bad megaphones, human voices, rikshas, birds, teastores, djinns... and naturally their counterpointic interaction that makes up the reality on more than one single layer. No audiomontage involved, besides compression and filtering it's pure unmanipulated field recording.
