(2023) electroacoustic music [6’49”]
The starting material are the recordings of the alto saxophone played by Gianpaolo Antongirolami to whom I asked to exemplify the 12 Language Types codified by Anthony Braxton for his own music: 1. Long Sound 2. Accented Long Sound 3. Trills 4. Staccato Line Formings 5. Intervallic Formings 6. Multiphonics 7. Short Attacks 8. Angular Attacks 9. Legato Formings 10. Diatonic Formings 11. Gradient Formings 12. Sub-Identity Formings. The recording was made in a large space using 8 different microphones: ORTF and binaural stereo placed in different points but far from the sound source, a clip-on over the bell, a lavalier on the player’s cheek, a dynamic microphone placed at 50 cm from the instrument, a contact microphone on the bell.
The formal analysis of 104-Kelvin M-18 (1979) by Anthony Braxton determined the algorithmic structure of the Csound instrument I used. Given a section duration and a number of repetitions, it reads the recordings of Antongirolami on my database schema: 12 language types by 8 tracks (microphones). For each sax’s fragment the tracks, chosen in a random or deterministic way, are always two and are put one on the right channel and one on the left channel. Therefore sudden spatial perspective jumps create unusual perceptive changes. The only treatment applied is convolution with sample from music that have had an important influence on Braxton: African tradition, Blues (Muddy Waters), Jazz (Coltrane, Coleman).
-169,15 Celsius is one of the compositions which make a larger project titled “Lo spirito del rischio”, with solo pieces by Anthony Braxton and Roberto Doati’s electronic pieces related to Braxton’s music.