>>>EVENTS 

Das Cabinet des Dr.Caligari
Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei
EdisonStudio - Video
Mahamad Ghavi Helm
Four Quartets

DAS CABINET DES DR. CALIGARI

Film by Robert Wiene
Decla Film - Berlin, 1919
Live computer soundtrack Edison Studio - Rome (2003)
Mauro Cardi, Luigi Ceccarelli, Fabio Cifariello Ciardi, Alessandro Cipriani
percussions, samplers and live electronics
Edison Studio live electronics
Duration: 84'
Produced by Edison Studio
with the contribute of 'Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Singapore', 'Goethe Institut - Rom',
'Cineteca Nazionale di Bologna'

Perfomances
International Computer Music Conference - ICMC 2003, Singapore October 2, 2003
Roma, Goethe-Institut Rom, December 15, 2003
Malmoe, Svezia, "Eletrisk 04", May 8, 2004
Catania, October 1, 2004, Auditorium Zo, Ass.Mus.Etnea
Cremona, November 18, 2004, Musica Insieme Cremona
Los Angeles, California, U.S.A., November 22, 2005 - "Scream 2005" - Redcat (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater) in Disney Concert Hall
Bourges (Francia), 2 Giugno 2006, Festival Synthèse 2006, Maison de la Culture, Petit Thèatre
Lipsia, 4 Dicembre 2006, Teatro dell'Opera, Kellertheater, Eine Frage (nach) der Geste
Trieste, 10 febbraio 2007, Teatro Miela, AllEstdellEden, rassegna di artigianato musicale europeo
L'Aquila, 27 marzo 2007, Cinema Massimo, Società Aquilana dei Concerti "B.Barattelli"
Budapest, 6 settembre 2007, Museo di Belle Arti, Sonor’Art, Manifestazione finale della mostra “Viaggio nell’Arte Italiana”
Trieste, 16 aprile 2008,Teatro Miela, FEST (Fiera dell'Editoria Scientifica di Trieste)

	In the little village of Holstenwall on the Dutch border, fairground hypnotist Dr.Caligari (Werner Krauss) puts on show a somnambulist called Cesare (Conrad Veidt) who has been asleep for twenty-three years. At night, dressed in a black body-stocking and with a ghostly white face, he slithers through the town murdering people on the doctor's orders. A student (Friedrich Feher) has his suspicions about Caligari after a friend is found dead and it transpires that the doctor is the director of a lunatic asylum. But the story also has a sting in the tail...	.
A masterpiece of expressionist cinema and the first cult-movie in cinema history, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari takes its inspiration from the most advanced experimental work carried out at the beginning of the last century in literature and art. Strongly imbued with a theme that denounces the sufferings of a deceptively free human condition, poised constantly between reality and fiction, Wiene's film also seems to be filled with surprising historical premonitions.
	After more than eighty years, the composition of the electroacoustic soundtrack by Edison Studio brings us once again a film that is eloquently redefined. The composition, commissioned by the International Computer Music Conference (Singapore 2003), was preceded by a lengthy phase of analysis and interpretation of the film. This led to the definition of the expressive atmosphere, formal programme and sound material that constitute the choice of timbre in the score: instrumental and vocal samples, pre-existing musical fragments, concrete and synthetic sounds. The score is for computer, MIDI keyboards connected to samplers, percussion instruments and resonant objects. The performance in real time, in keeping with and going beyond the silent film tradition, restores the excitement of a live invention not only of music but also of sound and verbal language environments that themselves blend into music and make it possible to develop flexibly and dynamically the intricate relationships existing between the sound material and the expressive and symbolic world of the characters and places.

GLI ULTIMI GIORNI DI POMPEI

Film by Eleuterio Ridolfi
Ambrosio Film, 1913
Live computer soundtrack Edison Studio - Rome (2001)
Mauro Cardi, Luigi Ceccarelli, Fabio Cifariello Ciardi, Alessandro Cipriani
Duration: 56'
Co-Production: Edison Studio 2001 - Fondazione MM&T Milano

Perfomances
Milano, November 16, 2001, Palazzina Liberty, Festival "Senza parole"
Roma, December 9, 2001, Goethe Institut, Edison Studio Incontri, Festival "Progetto Musica"
Goteborg, September 18, 2002, ICMC 2002 - work selected in the section Videos for Cinema Screening
Bolzano, "Rimusicazioni", 4 ottobre 2003
Iowa City, 28 ottobre 2003 - University of Iowa - Clapp Recital Hall
UMKC Conservatory of Music Kansas City, MO, October 31, 2003
Roma, June 21st, 2005, Festa della Musica
Roma, April 1st, 2006, Festival Sensoralia- Fondazione RomaEuropa, Teatro Palladium
Ercolano, July 17th, 2006, Villa Ruggiero, Festival delle Ville Vesuviane
Messina, January 28th, 2007, Teatro Savio, Istituzione Filarmonica Laudamo
Catania, January 30th, 2007, Centro di Culture Contemporanee “ZO, Associazione Musicale Etnea
Padova, May 07th, 2008, Sala MPX, "L'arte di filmare la musica", Amici della musica di Padova

"The Last Days Of Pompeii" (1913) is among the last of the great tableaux films. In this rendition of Bulwer's classic novel, set in 79 A.D., the lives of a prominent statesman, a beautiful woman, a pagan priest, a spiteful witch and a blind beggar are carefully interwoven and brought to a climax at the moment the sleeping volcano unleashes its fury. Edison Studio (Mauro Cardi, Luigi Ceccarelli, Fabio Cifariello Ciardi and Alessandro Cipriani) has composed a computer soundtrack on several layers: symbolic sonic backgrounds and foregrounds, dialogs in "improbable" languages, (un)naturalistic references. In the spirit of silent movie tradition soundtrack is performed live. The work has been selected for performance at ICMC2002 (Gothenburg, Sweden)..

HAVE A CLIP!
Taverna.mov (5.4MB)	Arbace.mov (8.2MB)	Glauco's bubbles.mov (8.7MB)	The Volcano.mov (6.4MB)	Nydia's end.mov (4.4MB)

EDISONSTUDIO - VIDEOS
Four videos with music by:
Mauro Cardi, Luigi Ceccarelli, Fabio Cifariello Ciardi, Alessandro Cipriani
Duration: 1 hour ca
Production: Edison Studio 2002

Program
"Still Blue (Homage to Derek Jarman)" (2000)
Video: Alessandro Cipriani, Silvia Di Domenico, Giulio Latini
Music: Alessandro Cipriani
"Games IV" (2000)
Video: Silvia Di Domenico e Giulio Latini
Music: Fabio Cifariello Ciardi
"Altrove con il suo nome" (2000-2001)
Video: Silvia Di Domenico e Giulio Latini; Testi: Pasquale Panella
Music: Mauro Cardi
"R for Redrum" (2002)
Video: Fanny & Alexander e A. Zapruder filmmakers' group
Music: Luigi Ceccarelli

Performances
Texas, november 11th 2002, Merrill Ellis Intermedia Theater, CEMI, University of North Texas
Bourges, june 9th 2003 - "Synthèse 2003", 33e Festival International des Musiques et Créations Electroniques
Firenze, may 25th 2005 - Ximmagine, staz.Leopolda, Tempo Reale

"Still Blue (Homage to Derek Jarman)" Still Blue (1998), dedicated to the memory of movie director Derek Jarman, is, in a way, the materialization of some images born from vision of his film Blue, his last movie in which he used no images, (only a blue screen for 78 minutes) and in which narration is based on sound. Our video, as his movie is based on a reflection about seeing, about sound and memory, death and memory of the body....through the blue of the water, where the act of seeing, losing itself , finds itself again. “A beautiful memorial”. (Larry Austin)
	"Games IV" Eyes ought to force their nature to stop frantic movements... raving but still lucid games... torn forms, obsessively repeated.... an unremitting recall to a fleeting reality... (Marina Antonucci) Games may be far from pleasure and close to interactions, confrontations, conflicts. That's why Games IV music is based on contacts, fugues, conquests and defeats of sonic organisms that dwell different virtual spaces. The listener is intended as the main player of a metaphorical and surrealistic 'audio game' driven by a live contrabass. (Fabio Cifariello Ciardi)
"Altrove con il suo nome" A pressing, vortical continuum, like a river in a full spate, parole come carri di sfilata, un corso che si vorrebbe inesauribile e che non stanca mai: Pasquale Panella’s words, by the homonymous episode from the collection “Oggetto d’amore”, constitutes the inspiration and the materials of Mauro Cardi’s music. Sliding through unknown route of a labyrinthine space, the music wraps and crosses the delicious features of a fascinating and sensual woman (interpreted by Sonia Bergamasco) who tries to take away herself from a constantly interrogative glance. Her movements expressivity, her gestures reiteration, the seductive indefinability of her eyes materialize, in a subtle crescendo, a pulsanting tension between visible and invisible. The interrogative glance is forced finally to surrender, leaving alive the radical mystery of a body, of a name, of an identity perpetually elsewhere.
	"R for Redrum" After months of rehearsals of the show “Requiem”, haunted by several hallucinations due to the red colour of the staging, he has an oculistic examination. This examination produces several intensified side-effects, driving him to an unexpected final decision.

Program
Alessandro Cipriani, "Bi Ma (Devoid of Self)" (2002), for percussion, voice and electronics
Mauro Cardi, "Alba" (2002), for zarb and electronics
Fabio Cifariello Ciardi, "Altri Passaggi" (2001), for two zarbs, two dafs and electronics
Luigi Ceccarelli, "De Zarb à Daf" (1997), for zarb and daf and electronics

First performance:
Rome, 21 November 2002, Sala Casella, "Crossings", Edison Studio Meetings, "Progetto Musica" Festival

Presentation
"Crossings" brings together the Persian percussionist Mahamad Ghavi-Helm and the composers of Edison Studio.
Mahamad Ghavi-Helm was born in Teheran in 1951 and studied at Teheran Conservatory and in France with Sylvio Gualda. An addition to his activities as a soloist, he holds seminars on the art of improvisation with Iranian percussion and teaches Western percussion at the Conservatories of Palaiseau and Bourges. Ghavi-Helm has performed with many of the leading Iranian masters and musicians. His recordings and performances have taken him to Europe, Asia and America.
The collaboration between Mahamad Ghavi-Helm and Edison Studio has produced a work in which East and West come together, with music that cuts across the Iranian musical tradition, new technology and the music of today.
The programme contains four works. In "Bi Ma" by Alessandro Cipriani a man is surrounded by the metallic jingle of plates and bells... he sounds them randomly, filling the space with sound. In "Alba" by Mauro Cardi a circular motion pervades the score: internal passages, each in search of itself. "Altri Passaggi" by Fabio Cifariello Ciardi marks, for the composer, an initiation into the mystery of the drum, the bridge between heaven and earth, the mother of all things. "De Zarb à Daf" by Luigi Ceccarelli is dedicated to Mahamad Ghavi-Helm, innovator in the technique of the Zarb and an ideal link between the age-old manual technique and digital technology.
The sound installations, the live electronics and the sound direction are devised by Edison Studio.
The space and lighting design are by Gianfranco Lucchino.

FOUR QUARTETS
Four Quartets
Four string quartets with live electronics
Bernini String Quartet
Edison Studio, live electronics and sound direction
Duration: 1 hour approx.
Production: Edison Studio 1999-2003

Program
"Quadro" (1994) by Alessandro Cipriani
"Luce - Ombra" (1995) by Luigi Ceccarelli
in preparation: string quartets by Mauro Cardi and Fabio Cifariello Ciardi

First performance (in part):
Rome, 13 December 1999, Studio One, Edison Studio Meetings, Progetto Musica Festival

The string quartet and the possibilities created by new technology provide two extraordinary resources for a composer. Together they offer the challenge of combining electronic processing with one of the most prestigious instrumental formations, archetypes of the great western musical tradition. And this sense of challenge implies a close collaboration and understanding between the musicians in order to experiment together with techniques and expressive means that make it possible for the interaction between quartet and electronics to be achieved. "Quattro Quartetti" in fact has been created in collaboration with one of the best known young quartets in Italy, the Bernini Quartet, with which the composers of Edison Studio have worked for some time, both as a group and individually. The Bernini Quartet was established in Rome and is composed of musicians who have studied at the leading music academies: Vienna, Luxembourg, Paris, Geneva, Osaka and Rome. The Quartet has studied with Pietro Farulli and has taken part in master-classes with the Melos, Amadeus, Berg, Tokyo and La Salle quartets. In 1998 it was appointed the Quartet in Residence at the Accademia Filarmonica Romana and was awarded the "Premio Michelangelo 1999" by Ennio Morricone for outstanding artistic merit. The Bernini Quartet has toured America, Europe and the Middle East. It has carried out many first performances of contemporary music and has taken part in the most notable concert seasons, performing alongside concert musicians of international renown, such as the Auer Quartetto, Paul Cortese and Jun Kanno. The Bernini Quartet has recently recorded "The Art of the Fugue" by J.S.Bach.

"Luce - Ombra" by Luigi Ceccarelli, for string quartet and tape. Originally written for the dance performance "Anihccam" in 1989, choreographed by Lucia Latour, it uses the concept of the futurist machine, brought up to date and conceived as a rigorous, relentless time mechanism that controls the string quartet. "Quadro" by Alessandro Cipriani, for string quartet and electronics. It brings together pieces of quartet music of differing kinds and works them into a single form, as if they were "essence-objects", using the tape as their transfiguring shadow or "other" object, creating a brief adventure into the world of the quartet by way of these objects. The form of the piece is built out of these materials and the concentration on the harmonic-disharmonic relationship of the sounds. Each cross-colours the other without development strategies. In 2003, alongside the two quartets by Cipriani and Ceccarelli, two new works were composed, the "Quartetto n°2" by Cardi and a new work by Cifariello Ciardi.