Review | By Aurelio Cianciotta / Neural
OSTN | PIETRO GROSSI (Sergio Armaroli)
A thought process deeply rooted in reality and then codified into abstract models, guided the career of Pietro Grossi who passed away in 2002. A composer, theoretician, pioneer of music informatics and founder of the Studio di Fonologia in Florence, Grossi supported a mathematical and procedural approach to music, anticipating what today we would call algorithmic logic. Although beginning as a classically trained cellist, his revolutionary spirit focused on liberating the musician from ‘inert instruments’, that is, traditional instruments, in favor of music without performers, where listening is the center and technology becomes a tool of emancipation. His was a utopian but lucid vision: to free musical production from the physical effort of performance, to focus on the organisation of sound as experience and architecture. On this new release by Gruenrekorder, as part of the impressive Sound Art Series collection, Sergio Armaroli becomes the interpreter and medium of Grossi’s thought process. A composer, teacher and scholar of Grossi’s work, Armaroli has dedicated years to a deep understanding of that process, to the point of becoming one of its most authoritative contemporary interpreters. The six tracks of OSTN (Ostinati) for vibraphone and tape are not simple performances, but sound translations. […]