LUCIANO CHESSA — CROMLECH

Performance – Organ and Intervention
Presented by Yellow Solo in cooperation with Kirchengemeinde vor dem Halleschen Tor
Passionskirche, Marheinekepl. 1, 10961 Berlin

March 15, Friday
Door opens: 8 pm
Starts: 8:30 pm
Tickets only on site: 10,-

Program:

1. Arthur Russell: Tower of Meaning Section G (1983/2018) 
Transcribed/arranged by Bill Ruyle
Organ version by Luciano Chessa

2. Luciano Chessa: Inneschi (2019)

3. Michael Tavioni: Nga Mata e Varu (1994)
Organ and Pātē version by Luciano Chessa

4. Luciano Chessa: State of the Union (2016)

5. Chris Newman: Song to God (1994)

6. Luciano Chessa: CROMLECH (2017/2018)

The Welsh term “cromlech” indicates an unadorned megalithic structure built with large flat stones for religious purposes. Chessa conceived the organ piece CROMLECH in Sintra, Portugal in the Fall 2017 after visiting a cromlech-like folly believed to have been built by William Beckford at the time when he lived in the Monserrate Estate (circa 1794). CROMLECH is the most recent installment of Chessa’s “Vathek”, an opera-in-progress based on Beckford’s gothic tale of the same name. 

Adopting the idea of “cromlech” as a metaphor for “anything that isn’t overdecorated”, Chessa arranged an evening of bare-bone tunes and performances. Compositions include Arthur Russell’s “Fragments from Tower of Meaning”, a piece of medieval-like austerity first transcribed and arranged for keyboard by longtime Russell collaborator Bill Ruyle; Mike Tavioni’s “Nga Mata e Varu” (Those Eight Eyes), a song that the celebrated Cook Islands māori artist dedicated to his mother, here presented in a transcription Chessa prepared for organ and a pātē (Cook Islands log drum) carved by Tavioni and tuned by Chessa in Avarua, Rarotonga under Tavioni’s guidance; Chris Newman’s deliberately stark, monodic “Song to God”; and Chessa’s monolithic CROMLECH. The evening also features two performances: “Inneschi”—Chessa’s reductionist piece for micro-feedback, and his intervention titled “State of the Union”.

Luciano Chessa is a composer, audiovisual and performance artist, music historian. His compositions include ‘A Heavenly Act’, an opera commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, with original video by Kalup Linzy; ‘Piombo’, a piece for 2bows cello written for Frances-Marie Uitti and commissioned by NYC’s MAGAZZINO Italian Art, and the opera ‘Cena oltranzista nel castelletto al lago’, a work merging experimental theater with reality TV which required from the cast over 55 hours of fasting, commissioned by the Festival TRANSART and MUSEION, Bolzano’s Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. Chessa has been commissioned multiple times by the Performa Biennial, and 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 has collaborated with artists of the likes of Mike Kelley, Kalup Linzy, Ugo Rondinone, Chris Newman and Tarik Kiswanson, presented his works in such museums as the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Berkeley Art Museum, SFMOMA, MONA in Tasmania, and the MART in Rovereto.

Chessa is also a music historian specializing 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 across the USA and internationally to sold out houses including 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. With this project he collaborated with the likes of Joan La Barbara, Mike Patton, Lee Ranaldo, Ellen Fullman, Blixa Bargeld, Pauline Oliveros, among others.

In the Winter 2018, while in residency at the Steel House in Rockland, ME to develop the audiovisual installation #00FF00 #FF00FF, he prepared for Schirmer the diplomatic edition of Julius Eastman’s Symphony No. II, the world premiere of which he conducted at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. His edition of this piece has been performed by both The New York Philharmonics and The Cleveland Orchestra 2022.

Luciano Chessa studied organ with renowned Italian master Andrea Macinanti at Bologna’s Conservatory and with organist and composer Pellegrino Santucci. Throughout the years, Chessa has performed on organs among the finest in Italy and the United States, including two of Italy’s best Tamburini: the Grande Organo in the Sala Bossi, and Grande Organo in the Basilica di Santa Maria dei Servi, both in Bologna, as well as the magnificent 7466 pipes Aeolian-Skinner instrument in San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral. In 2021 he performed for Carnegie Hall’s Voices of Hope Festival, an event that had turned online due to the pandemic, a solo organ recital on the Karl Schuke organ from Berlin’s iconic Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. Chessa’s organ compositions, including his large-scale AIR RIGHTS (2021) are published by Carrara and Verlag Neue Musik.

www.lucianochessa.com

Special thanks to György Jaksity, Michael Keuntje, Johannes Stolte, Annette Wiegand and to the Evangelische Kirchengemeinde vor dem Halleschen Tor.