Magazzino Italian Art is pleased to announce Piombo: Music for Primo Levi, a concert by Luciano Chessa and Frances-Marie Uitti in collaboration with the Centro Primo Levi in New York. The 60-minute concert was inspired by Primo Levi, an Italian-Jewish writer, chemist, and Holocaust survivor, and crafted in commemoration of the forthcoming Giornata della Memoria—the International Holocaust Remembrance Day observed every year on January 27th. The performance will feature two musical pieces: Quest[o] / Una meditazione and Piombo, both composed in 2022.
Conceived by Chessa and Uitti, Quest[o] / Una meditazione meditates on the term “questo” (this) as it appears in the title of Levi’s most renowned book: Se questo è un uomo (If This is a Man), an account of the writer’s experiences in Auschwitz. “Questo” and “quest” are false cognates that this musical work connects. Whereas “questo” is the wronged humanity to which Primo Levi points us to look at, “quest” is the search implicit in making everyone a witness, someone implicated and prompted to respond.
Composed by Luciano Chessa for Frances-Marie Uitti, Piombo was inspired by the eponymous story in Levi’s book Il Sistema Periodico. The performance alternates rhythmic tension with 19th century melody through the “2bow” technique, invented by Uitti in the 1970s. To expand the sounds of the cello, the performance will activate lead objects, bells, and a reading from Levi’s original “Piombo” story.
After the New York premiere at Magazzino Italian Art, Piombo will travel to California.
About Luciano Chessa
Luciano Chessa is a composer, conductor, audiovisual/performance artist, and music historian. Chessa's compositions include A Heavenly Act, an opera commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Cromlech, an organ piece written for Melbourne’s Town Hall Organ; and Cena oltranzista nel castelletto al lago, an opera merging experimental theater with reality TV. Chessa has created multiple works commissioned by the Performa Biennial. In 2014, he presented three events at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum as part of the exhibition Italian Futurism, 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Universe. Chessa’s work has appeared in Artforum, Flash Art, Art in America, and Frieze; and has been featured in the Italian issue of Marie Claire and in the September Issue of Vogue Italia. As a music historian, Chessa specializes in 20th century Italian and 21st century American repertoire.
He is the author of Luigi Russolo Futurist. Noise, Visual Arts, and the Occult (2012), the first book dedicated to Russolo and his “Art of Noise.” In 2009, his Orchestra of Futurist Noise Intoners (OFNI) was hailed by the New York Times as one of the best events of the year. Chessa has conducted this project around the world at venues such as Rockefeller Center in New York, RedCat in Los Angeles, the New World Center in Miami, Radial System / Maerzmusik-Berliner Festspiele, the ArtScience Museum in Singapore, and Lisbon’s Municipal Theater. In the Winter 2018, while in residency at the Steel House in Rockland, ME, he developed the audiovisual installation #00FF00 #FF00FF and prepared the diplomatic edition of Julius Eastman's Symphony No. II for Schirmer. After publication, he conducted the piece’s premiere at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall.
About Frances-Marie Uitti
Frances-Marie Uitti cellist/composer, is known for inventing a radical method of playing with two bows simultaneously in the right hand. Through her 2bows technique, she can create 4, 3, and 2 part chords and play non adjacent strings, while the left hand is free to define pitches. She has invented over 250 different resonators that alter the color, dynamics, amplify beats as well as subharmonics below the C string, and designed electric instruments including her 6-string electric cello and her all-sensor 12-string double-bridged cello. Her work has been published by Contemporary Music Review, Cambridge University Press, Granta, Tempo, Muziektexte, and Arcana, among others.
Uitti has given master classes to composers and string players at Yale, Stanford, Juilliard, and Harvard among many others. Her compositions have earned her a Fromm Foundation Grant, an award from the National Endowments for the Arts, a residency at Civitella Ranieri, commissions from the Holland Festival, Festival di Como, Biennale di Venezia, ICM London, National Sawdust NYC, and Ircam. Her work has been released by ECM records, Etcetera, Cryptogrammophone, ZoAr, Mode, JdKrecords, Seraphin, and BVHaast. Uitti plays both an Italian cello from 1700s, and also an aluminum cello from the 1920's. Luciano Chessa wrote Piombo for the unique sound created by this aluminum instrument.
About Centro Primo Levi
Centro Primo Levi is a New York based organization inspired by the humanistic legacy of writer and chemist Primo Levi, who survived Auschwitz and became a fundamental reference in the discourse on history and memory in modern societies. CPL fosters education and debate on Primo Levi’s work and the history of Italian and Mediterranean Jews. Topics discussed in our public programs and academic seminars are disseminated through our online monthly Printed Matter and publishing endeavor, CPL Editions. The Center works closely with many organizations, including the New York Public Library, NYU Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò, The New School, Columbia University, CUNY, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, CENTRA Genova, and the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation in Milan.
