Interview with Daniele Del Monaco
Magazine audio
Non luoghi musicali
The Zone – Blixa Bargeld/Theodosii Spassov/Lcp Ensemble: Report e interviste
Magazine audio
The Zone – Blixa Bargeld/Theodosii Spassov/Lcp Ensemble: Report e interviste
“She’s essentially invented her own hybrid of song and spoken word, a scat style for today’s avant-garde.”
-Giovanni Russonello, The New York Times
Sound Artist FAY VICTOR is an improvising vocalist, composer, lyricist and educator riding all the chasms and seams of musics that are improvisational and conversational in nature.
Brooklyn, NY based sound artist/composer Fay Victor hones a unique vision for the vocal role in jazz and improvised music regarding repertoire, improvisation and composition. Victor has an ‘everything is everything’ aesthetic, using the freedom in the moment to inform the appropriate musical response, viewing the vocal instrument as full of possibilities for sound exploration, a through-line for direct messages in an improvising context. Victor embraces all of these ideas in real time and on Victor’s 11 critically acclaimed albums as a leader one can hear the evolution of this expansive expression.
Victor’s work has been featured in media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Rolling Stone Magazine & The Huffington Post; Victor’s performed with luminaries such as William Parker, Roswell Rudd, Dr. Randy Weston, Nicole Mitchell, Misha Mengelberg, Myra Melford, Archie Shepp, Marc Ribot & Tyshawn Sorey to name but a few; Performance highlights include The Museum of Modern Art & The Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC), The Hammer Museum (LA), The Kolner Philharmonie (Germany), De Young Museum (SF), Symphony Space (NY), The Earshot Jazz Festival (Seattle), The Winter Jazz Festival (NYC) and the Bimhuis (Netherlands).
As a composer, Victor has been awarded prizes such as the 2017 Herb Albert/Yaddo Fellow in Music Composition, a 2018 AIR in Composition for the Headlands Center for the Arts in California and a 2020 recipient of a Jazz Coalition Commission to create during the pandemic. Victor composed ‘Sirens & Silences’, which premiered in May 2022 in Brooklyn, NY. Victor has been commissioned to write a work for voice and violin entitled ‘Breathe Them In’, premiere at the New England Conservatory in 2023, performed by Eden MacAdam-Somer.
An innovative educator, Victor is on the faculty of the College of Performing Arts at the New School where she teaches interdisciplinary practices and Vocal Performance, at the ROC Nation School for Sports, Music and Entertainment at Long Island University and continues to give talks and clinics on Jazz, creative improvisation, Composition and more at institutions around the world. Victor is a member of the International Contemporary Ensemble, Chairs an Advisory Board for the Jazz Leaders Fellowship, a new initiative for the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, and is an ex-officio Board Member of the IASJ/The International Association of Schools of Jazz.
“Ms. Victor is a singer with her own brand: She’s theatrical and extreme without being campy. Expectations about a jazz vocalist’s demeanor — that it can’t be too aggressive, or that if it’s biting it can’t also be warm — don’t mean a thing to her. And forget about continuity. Sometimes melody leads to rhythm, or an explosion or a scream. Her affects are all scrambled. In that way, her playing sounds firmly planted in the age of digital media. When she does sing even or discernible pitches, her precision is remarkable. But even more striking is how conversational and direct it feels. She’s essentially invented her own hybrid of song and spoken word, a scat style for today’s avant-garde.”
-Giovanni Russonello, The New York Times
Read the entire article here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/arts/music/best-live-jazz-marquis-hill-blacktet-fay-victor-starebaby.html
“If you have never seen her perform live, she is joy incarnate. She scats, she wails, coos, squalls, caresses, plays with words as if writing a play on stage, and does so with a twinkle in her eye. One can hear influences ranging from Nina Simone to Frank Zappa to Bill Dixon to Jimi Hendrix in her music.
-Richard Kamins, Step Tempest
“The whole legacy of Jazz is in her voice”
-Nicole Mitchell (noted composer and flute player), The Wall Street Journal
“Accomplished vocal modernist Fay Victor manages to deconstruct the tradition of jazz song without pretension or tedium”
–Time Out New York
“Victor is at the vanguard of jazz singers…
-Signal to Noise
“Post Captain Beefheart Jazz” -Kevin Whitehead
Born in Naples – Italy, MARCO CAPPELLI studied classical guitar at the Conservatorio di S. Cecilia in Rome. Supported by a scholarship provided by the Italian Government, he studied with Oscar Ghiglia at the Musik Akademie der Stadt in BASEL – Switzerland, concluding his Konzert-Diplom with a recital featuring a remarkable performance of Le Marteau Sans Maître by Pierre Boulez and Sonata op. 47 by Alberto Ginastera.
He has lead since the middle 90ies an extraordinary artistic path, becoming familiar with rigorous written music as well with free improvisation languages: nowadays Marco Cappelli works as contemporary music interpreter, as side musician for other artists’ projects, as well as composer and band leader and with his original music.
The diversity of Marco’s performances is due to a fascinating array of collaborations: Anthony Coleman, Michel Godard, Butch Morris, Franco Piersanti, Jim Pugliese, Enrico Rava, Marc Ribot, Adam Rudolph, Elliott Sharp, Giovanni Sollima, Markus Stockhausen, Cristina Zavalloni, Raiz… and many more.
He has toured intensively in South Korea, Japan, China, USA, Canada and Europe, being regularly guest – both as a soloist or in ensemble settings – in major classical and contemporary music series (Teatro Massimo in Palermo, Associazione Scarlatti in Napoli, Ravenna Festival, Festival Traiettorie in Parma, Ente Teatro Lirico in Cagliari, Guggenheim Museum in New York, Italian Academy at Columbia University in New York, BAM Fisher Theater in Brooklyn, Salzburg Festival in Austria, Ruhr Triennale and Ludwigsburg Schlossfestspiele in Germany…) as well in jazz and avant-garde music festivals (Saalfelden Jazz Festival in Austria, Pomigliano Jazz Festival in Italy, Barnsdall Theatre e Watts Tower Jazz Festival in Los Angeles , Moma in New York, OutPut Festival in Amsterdam, Montreal Jazz Festival in Canada, Cité de la Musique in Paris, Belgrade Jazz Festival, Cerkno Jazz Festival in Slovenia…).
Very active as soloist, Marco co-founded the acclaimed Italian contemporary music groups ENSEMBLE DISSONANZEN, and leads three band projects: MARCO CAPPELLI ACOUSTIC TRIO, ITALIAN SURF ACADEMY and IDR- ITALIAN DOC REMIX.As side musician, he is member of MARC RIBOT CAGED FUNK, ADAM RUDOLPH’S GO: ORGANIC ORCHESTRA and LCP ENSEMBLE.
Marco has developed a large discography, among which we remember two solo guitar cds : Yun Mu, for the for the Italian label TDS, and EGP-Extreme Guitar Project: Music from Downtown New York for the prestigious American label Mode Records. Mode Records also published two cds by Ensemble Dissonanzen, where Marco is involved in G. Petrassi’s and H.W. Henze’s chamber Music.In 2008 the Italian jazz label Itinera released the first cd of Marco’s band IDR – Italian Doc Remix. In 2011, as memorial for the Twin Towers’ attack, Mode Records released In The Shadow of No Towers: a dvd that Marco realized with his band Syntax Error in collaboration with comic artist Art Spiegelman and actor John Turturro, which has been presented in film festival such as Toronto Jewish Film Festival and UK Jewish Film Festival in London). More recently the same label released Les Nuages en France and The American Dream debut albums by, respectively, MARCO CAPPELLI ACOUSTIC TRIO and ITALIAN SURF ACADEMY. In 2013 the second Acoustic Trio cd, due to Marco’s collaboration with writer Maurizio De Giovanni and titled Le Stagioni del Commissario Ricciardi , has been released by Tzadik, the prestigious John Zorn‘s label.
In 2012 Marco scored the film Intervallo by Leonardo Di Costanzo, which has been premiered at 69th Venice International Film Festival and has gained the prestigious price David di Donatello. He composes and plays live music for the New York based Young Soon Kim Dance Company, which after its successful South Korea tour (2012) performed at BAM Fisher Theater in Brooklyn (June 2014). In the Fall 2014, together with actor Andrea Renzi, he premiered the theater play Sonata per il Commissario Ricciardi, produced by Teatro Garibaldi in Palermo and presented at the prestigious Napoli Teatro Festival 2015, with live music by MARCO CAPPELLI ACOUSTIC TRIO. Later in 2015, Marco has been artist in residence at The Stone, the prestigious experimental and avant-garde New York venue directed by John Zorn.
Since 2004 Marco Cappelli made his home in Brooklyn, NY. At the side of his concert activity, Marco Cappelli teaches intensively: he is guitar professor at Conservatorio “Vincenzo Bellini” in Palermo and Associate Professor at Columbia University Music Performance Program in New York. He has taught as assistant with Mrs. Sharon Isbin at Aspen Summer School, and has been “guest professor” at Julliard School, Mannes College and New York University in New York, at Cal Poly University in Los Angeles, at Guadalajara University and at Ecole Sainte Trinité in Haiti.
Ken Filiano (born 1952) is an American jazz and orchestral bassist[1][2] based in Brooklyn, New York.[3]
Since the 1970s, Filiano has played or recorded with Anthony Braxton, Fred Ho, Nels Cline, Bill Dixon, Fay Victor, and others.[4][5][6] Filiano is on the teaching roster at the New School in New York.[7] He teaches master classes in bass and improvisation and has a private studio in Brooklyn.
Filiano was born in Patchogue, New York. He began playing trumpet as a child and continued to play the instrument while attending Syracuse University and studying with Rudolf Nashan. Nearing the end of his undergraduate work, Filiano decided to switch to bass and study with V. Stewart Wheeler. He received a Bachelor of Music in Double Bass from Syracuse University in 1978.
Filiano did graduate work at the University of Southern California in the late 1980s before eventually receiving a Master of Music in Double Bass from Rutgers University in 1997. While at Rutgers, he studied with bassists Carolyn Davis, John Feeney, and Larry Ridley, as well as with Ted Dunbar, Kenny Barron, Ralph Bowen, and Daniel Goode.
Filiano began his professional career in 1974, working across the Northeastern United States from his home base in Syracuse, New York. From 1975-76 he was the principal bassist in the Syracuse University Orchestra.
As the decade began, Filiano lived in Boston. From 1980-83 he was a member of the Search quartet, performing and giving master classes sponsored by the Performing Artist Association of New England. In 1983, Filiano relocated to Los Angeles, California. He began to work as a freelance bassist in classical recording studios and on the jazz scene. He formed a relationship with multi-instrumentalist Vinny Golia, with whom he toured North America and Europe throughout the 1980s.
Filiano made his jazz album debut in 1985, appearing on recordings by Golia and Arni Cheatham. In the second half of the decade, he recorded with Richard Grossman, Steve Adams[8] and Kim Richmond. Filiano also performed in numerous classical concerts, both solo and in chamber ensembles, in the Los Angeles area, including performances of "'L'Histoire du Soldat' and the Dvorak Quintet, along with premieres of new works for contrabass by Yu-Chin Quo and John Kennedy.
The 90s were a fertile recording period for Filiano, who appeared on more than 50 albums with Golia,[9] Grossman, Adams, Tony Lujan, Anthony Coleman, Hafez Modirzadeh, Bill Perkins, Joelle Leandre and many others.
Filiano performed around North America, Europe, and Japan, including at the Bergamo Jazz Festival (Italy), the Du Maurier Atlantic Jazz Festival (Canada), the Tampere International Jazz Festival (Finland), the Texaco New York Jazz Festival, and at the Blue Note in Fukuoka, Japan. He also performed classical and tango music, including touring Germany with the Giora Feidman Ensemble, performing duo concerts for cello and contrabass, playing with the New York/Buenos Aires Connection at the Hollywood Bowl, and premiering a solo bass work, 'Yauchzen', by composer Kitty Brazelton.
As the 21st century began, Filiano increased his busy recording and touring schedule, appearing on more than 70 albums. In addition to his continuing relationships from the 90s, he added performances and recordings with Dom Minasi,[10] Fred Hess, Roswell Rudd, Paul Smoker, Rodrigo Amado, Andrea Wolper, Jason Kao Hwang,[11] Marco Cappelli, and many others. He continued to perform at many of the premier clubs and festivals around the world, including at the Knitting Factory, the Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival (New York), Merkin Concert Hall (New York), the JVC Jazz Festival (New York), the Jazz ao Centro Festival (Portugal), the Cape Verde International Jazz Festival, the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, and others. He played with several tango ensembles. His classical work included performances with the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, the Princeton Chamber Orchestra, and the Sirius String Quartet.
Filiano has appeared on more than a dozen recordings since the start of the new decade,[12] including on trumpeter Bill Dixon’s final recording, 'Envoi', and on albums with Anthony Braxton, Connie Crothers, Taylor Ho Bynum, Nate Wooley and Anders Nilsson, among others. Filiano has performed at festivals and clubs[13][14] around the world, including in the United States, Canada, Slovenia, Italy, Germany, France, and Russia.
Filiano has been teaching bass since 1980, both privately and at colleges and universities. He’s also taught at Mansfield University, Rutgers University, Hunter College and the University of Southern California.[15]
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996
1995
1994
1993
1992
1991
1990
1989
1986
1985
Satoshi Takeishi, drummer, percussionist, and arranger is a native of Mito, Japan. While at Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA, he developed an interest in the music of South America and went to live in Colombia following the invitation of a friend. He spent four years there and forged many musical and personal relationships. One of the projects he worked on while in Colombia was “Macumbia” with composer/arranger Francisco Zumaque in which traditional, jazz and classical music were combined. With this group he performed with the Bogota symphony orchestra to do a series of concerts honoring the music of the most popular composer in Colombia, Lucho Bermudes. In 1986 he returned to the U.S. in Miami where he began work as an arranger. In 1987 he produced “Morning Ride” for jazz flutist Nestor Torres on Polygram Records. His interest expanded to the rhythms and melodies of the middle east where he studied and performed with Armenian-American oud master Joe Zeytoonian. Since moving to New York in 1991 he has performed and recorded with many musicians such as Ray Barretto, Carlos “Patato” Valdes, Eliane Elias, Marc Johnson, Eddie Gomez, Randy Brecker, Dave Liebman, Anthony Braxton, Mark Murphy, Herbie Mann, Paul Winter Consort, Rabih Abu Khalil, Toshiko Akiyoshi Big Band, Erik Friedlander and Pablo Ziegler to name a few. He continues to explore multi-cultural, electronics and improvisational music with local musicians and composers in New York.
For more then ten years he was the youngest member in Nuova Consonanza (Ennio Morricone, Domenico Guaccero, Franco Evangelisti, etc), an association of musicians and composers established in Rome in the late 1950s, where he immersed himself in the creation and promotion of experimental, electronic and avant-garde music. He received commissions from institutions such as Accademia Filarmonica Romana, Società Aquilana di Concerti Barattelli, Opera In-Canto, RME, Opéra Orchester National de Montpellier, RomaEuropa, RaiTrade etc. He has developed a personal research where converge experiences of radical improvisation, intuitive music, the influence of rock and songs, and collaboration with creative improvisers and musicians from around the world.
The album Musica ripudiata (Studiolo Laps 2014) is a collection of some of the most representative compositions of his chamber production from 2003 to 2013. Thanks to the project Musica per filosofi (a piece for choir, two organs, two percussionists and electronics commissioned in 2002 by the Ready Made Ensemble) he approached the electroacoustic music for the first time. After the performance of Guernica, an opera commissioned in 2007 by Nuova Consonanza, and with a view to working more independently, Del Monaco gradually transitioned into music creating in a less academic context and started producing shows and records in his own right. He wrote for and worked with small and large ensembles of improvisers, running a series of workshops at Scuola popolare di musica del Testaccio in Rome. During the same period he also conducted several scores from the 1900s (Cage, Cardew, Stockhausen, Guaccero, etc). In 2007 he became a founding member of the multidisciplinary collective LCP, producing multimedia live shows at the crossroads of music and performance art, involving classical musicians as well as improvisers.
Among LCP's productions one should mention Psicosusina Turboaccelerata (LCP 2013), an interactive multimedia storytelling for video and instruments. The show had several developments in the following years both in Italy and in the USA (Psychoplum!) thanks to the artistic partnership with the Marco Cappelli Trio (Ken Filiano, Satoshi Takeishi and Marco Cappelli).
After a brief interlude in musical theater in 2014, with Caligola (Vocalia Consort+LCP), an opera commissioned by Nuova Consonanza for a mask, choir and small orchestra, his activity concentrates on satisfying the need of playing and composing songs, seeking for the intensity of the musical gesture and its urgency. In this period, various experiences with the LCP percussion quintet merged into the first edition of The Zone (2014) a show featuring also Blixa Bargeld (Nick Cave, Einstürzende Neubauten) and the kaval virtuoso Theodosii Spassov. A similar production, New Getto Songs (2014), came to light in the same year thanks to the creative collaboration with composer Yotam Haber and frontman Raiz (Almamegretta, Massive attack).
Some of his scores are constructed almost like a game, such as the song cycle written for the VoxNova vocal ensemble by Nicholas Isherwood (TedX commission 2015) and the Atarassia string quartet (Gasteig, Munich, 2015).
In 2019 a second edition of The Zone debuted in Rome and then was produced in Sheffield by Thomas Lebioda for the Studio3recordings label. The record was released as a concept album on audiophile quality double vinyl and received excellent critical acclaim.
More recently, now a father of two, Del Monaco has devoted himself to a calmer and more “poetic” lifestyle (to quote his own words), residing on a small island of fishermen in the Venetian lagoon.
He is a passionate sailor, serves the local community volunteering as an ambulance-boat driver and works on his own musical projects in his home studio.
Some of the more recent works include the Capelli / Filliano / Takeishi trio in Brooklyn NY, Ensemble Dissonanzen in Naples, a trio with the singer Maura Guerrera and the sitar player Bert Cornelis, Nicholas Isherwood's VoxNova Italia and, of course, The Zone.
Most important independent projects in no particular order:
Musica Ripudiata/Studiolo Laps, chamber music from 2003 till 2013; Musica per filosofi/RME, music by Del Monaco and Steve Reich; Il fuoco di Ned/NED, free impro and aleatory music; Aleanova/self-produced, the album of Aleanova aleatory music ensemble; The Zone/Studio III Recordings, a concept album featuring New York musicians and improvisers; Guernica, 2007 (with qwert Ensemble); Simurgh, 2007 (with Flavio Albanese); Prove di fuga dalla terra, 2008 (with Salvo Piro); Psicosusina Turboaccelerata, 2013 (with LCP); Caligola, 2014 (with Vocalia Consort); Il Viaggio, 2013 (with LCP); The Zone live debut, 2014 (with Blixa Bargeld, Theodosii Spassov and LCP percussion quintet); New Getto Songs, 2014, collaboration with Yotam Haber, Raiz and LCP; Psychoplum, 2018; The Zone 2019 (with Marc Ribot and Fay Victor); Opus, 2021 (with Ensemble Dissonanzen).
Collaborators in no particular order: Flavio Albanese, Alea Nova, Marco Ariano, Tom Arthurs, Blixa Bargeld, Roberto Bellatalla, Ljuba Bergamelli, Andrea Biagioli, Gustavo Brinholi, Matteo Capogna, Marco Cappelli, Vania Castelfranchi, Anna Clementi, Gabriele Coen, Massimo Coen, Stefano Cogolo, Eugenio Colombo, Vocalia Consort, Bert Cornelis, Francesco Cusa, Errico De Fabritiis, Rocco De Rose, Zeno De Rossi, Barbara Di Lieto, Diaspora, Dissonanzen, Ken Filiano, Avrham Fever, FACha Quartet, Solisti della Filarmonica Romana, Freon Ensemble, Oliviero Giorgiutti, Giovanni Guaccero, Maura Guerrera, Yotam Haber, Quartetto Harmos, Roberto Herlitzka, Ensemble Incanto, Nicholas Isherwood, Pape Kanoute, JT Lewis, Armando Lôbo , Fabio Maestri, Paolo Marchettini, Sabina Mayer, Sylvia Maynger, Luca Mereu, Giona Messina, Josè Mobilia, Claudio Montuori, Sandro Naglia, Sena Ndiaye, Alipio Neto, Nublast, Økapi, Benny Penazzi, Mihail Jora Philharmonics, Salvo Piro, Marc Ribot, Raiz, Pierpaolo Ranieri, Ready Made Ensemble, Susanna Rigacci, Adam Rudolph, Gianluca Ruggeri, Sandro Satta, Alessandro Sbordoni, Giancarlo Schiaffini, Francesco Snoriguzzi, Theodosii Spassov, SPMT, Tabala, Satoshi Takeishi, Stomu Takeishi, Gianfranco Tedeschi, Pamela Toscano, Fay Victor, VoxNova, Aldo Vio, Stefano Zorzanello and others.
