Musica in Prossimità

Musica in prossimità 2024 will be the X edition of the Festival, that wants to confirm itself as an intense festival with a 360 degrees view on contemporary music. The festival is based in Pinerolo (Turin-Italy) and it’s organised by Associazione Metamorfosi Notturne founded by Maurice Quartet to develop contemporary culture in their born town. The festival is spread over different places in the centre of the town, adding for this edition some locations previously unexplored by the events.

Festival activities will be concentrated in a long weekend, from 29 November to 1 December. The excellent results of last year confirm the won challenge to programme the festival in the winter period.

This new edition could be summarise as follow: 1 octet concert (string quartet+vocal quartet), 2 duo concerts, 1 solo, 1 AV show, 2 workshop, 1 double talk.

The Festival's brief for this edition is more ambitious than ever: a double work for string quartet and vocal quartet, born from the new collaboration between the Maurice Quartet and the Swiss Ensemble SoloVoices: "Spiegel Spiele" project, written by the composers Bernard Lang (Austria) and Juste Janulyte (Lithuania). The two creations will be performed for the first time at the opening of the festival, Friday 29 November at the Basilica of San Maurizio.

The audience will continue the night towards the renovated “Auditorium Corso Piave”, as citizens of Pinerolo friendly called it, to listen to the scratchy contemporary punk of Yeah Duo (voice + electronics).

On the 2nd day, Saturday 30, the festival will begin with a big double talk in the afternoon at Cavalieri Saloon with Juste Janulyte and Bernard Lang about pieces of the night before and on the topic of compositional methods, critical issues and creativity.

The evening concerts on the second day include the disconcerting Hyper Duo (keybords + drums), capable of broadening horizons in a multimedia-nervous performance at Teatro del Lavoro with music by Nemtsov, Paxton, Colin Alexander and their own pieces. The evening will continue with a new listening experience, as the instrument involved appears for the first time in the festival programming: it is the great organ of the Church of Madonna di Fatima, that is a tool of great importance at a territorial and national level. Will be performed LaMonte Young's piece "Composition 1960//7", linked to the composer's minimalist history, but which definitely borders on drone music and which will be performed by Giulio Tosti, an organist who for years has carried out intense research in field of contemporary improvisation with this instrument. It will be an opportunity to explore the sounds of an instrument that, unfortunately, still doesn't feature enough in the programming of contemporary music festivals in Italy and a very big news in the small city of Pinerolo.

This edition will end on Sunday 1 December with 2 workshops held in collaboration with Civic Istitute Corelli, the civic music school, also partner of the entire Festival. The morning will open with a lesson curated by Giulio Tosti and will be focus on contemporary organ approach for all the students of the civic school.

The second workshop custom designed fo the music school is "Electric Forests", by the electronic composer Johann Merrich, intended for very young students of preparatory courses and their families. A walk around the city to capture sounds inaudible to the human ear thanks to a particular device, Ether by Somasynths, which allows you to listen to electromagnetic sound around us. The workshop will end with a final live performance.

From the late afternoon, we will have the last concerts: an evocative approach to percussion with Alexis Degrenier, who will propose a refined solo at the Sala Italo Tajo, with the use of an incredible instrumentarium rich in sounds.

The festival will end with a big closing at Teatro Sociale of Pinerolo, with the Tunisian musician Deena Abdelwahed. Her musical explorations are highlighting the elements that define the diversity of Arab music, mixing from electronic dance music influenced by club culture and the avant-garde scene. On stage also Khali Epi (multi-instrumentalist) and Niculin Barandun (visuals).