ABOUT THE PROJECT

Pietro Frigato and Marco Bussi of Ensemble Collettivo Crisis and Vlatko Kučan of SPIIC Ensemble thus begin an experimentation of collective improvisation on-line. Soon Daniel Savio, another E.C.C. guitarist, and Giulio Gianì, already a member of the SPIIC Ensemble, joined the group. So Diaries of a Quarantine (DoaQ) is formed as a project that explores the possibilities, the limits, the peculiarities of playing improvised music collectively at a distance and that collects through improvisations the memories of 5 musicians scattered around Europe in an extremely critical historical moment.
While the musicians were experiencing the real-time music making, the designer and visual artist Leonie Sens was locked down together with Vlatko Kučan in Dalmatia and working on new graphical images that were reflecting the pandemic and its implications. As a co-producer of Hamburg’s The Art Of Improvisation/ TAOI concert series and through various other projects Leonie Sens has a long standing relationship with the involved musicians. The result of her work is a series of images, that instantly connected to the music of the quintet. As the decision was made to connect both works in the form of music films, Leonie Sens de-constructed her works into graphical particles and symbols in order to re-construct them in the time domain as animated films that form a new unity with the sound tracks of the music.
The quintet method requires the sessions to be recorded: each musician in fact records his performance in the room where he is, with the means at his disposal, and the performances are then assembled together, re-assembled to form a new diary page. Each single track is in itself a small soundscape, each track has different reverberations, the sound is colored by different microphones, making each recording unique and peculiar, which in fact has the strength of necessity.
Collectively improvising remotely involves a series of limitations and constraints. These limitations, which the available technologies are not yet able to overcome, have been accepted as a given situation, a compromise from which we can re-arrange to create music together, but they have also become a tool with which we have interacted creatively and from which we have learned something new.
The rehearsal sessions were also a moment to share fears and feelings, ideas and considerations (Giulio and Marco were in Lombardy and Veneto, two of the areas of Italy most affected by the epidemic) and also an opportunity to discuss the role of the musician and the role of music during the quarantine, asking questions about playing together and doing it at a distance, especially at a critical time like the last few months.

ABOUT THE PROTAGONISTS

Ensemble Collettivo Crisis
is a group of composers and performers focused on music research and production in the fields of new music, improvisation and contemporary arts. They are active since 2012, based in Rovigo, in the north-east of Italy. The collective's core and founders are Pietro Frigato and Marco Bussi.
The recent music production and research of Ensemble Collettivo Crisis investigates the unconscious formal paths and structures of free improvisation. The Ensemble is active in contemporary music composition as well, bringing improvisation in the score, deepening the idea of structuralism and expanding the possibilities of traditional instruments through live electronics and new technologies.
www.crisisensemble.com

Vlatko Kučan
is a musician and improvisor. He is teaching Improvisation at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater (HfMT) in Hamburg, Germany at the Jazz department BA and MA programs and the Contemporary Performance and Composition (CoPeCo) MA program. Since 2018 he is the head of the Studio for Polystilistic Improvisation and Interdisciplinary Crossover (SPIIC) – a project of innovative Hochschule – Stage_2.0. The SPIIC Ensemble has been featured in various events since its founding. From 2015 - 2017 VK has been curating the concert series SoloSoloDuo-Impromptu with over sixty concerts during that time period. Since December 2017 he is curating the concert series The Art Of Improvisation / TAOI at Resonanzraum St. Pauli.
www.vlatkokucan.de
https://www.hfmt-hamburg.de/innovative-hochschule/spiic/

Leonie Sens
is a designer and visual artist based in Hamburg, Germany. She is the owner of the label le.sens and has received high international acclaims for her work as textile designer. She has worked as a stage and costume designer for theater. Since 2017 Leonie Sens is a co-producer of The Art of Improvisation/ TAOI concert series in Hamburg.
www.le-sens.de

THANKS

thanks to VAMH/ Verband für aktuelle Musik Hamburg for supporting this project:
Ein Projekt des Online Musicking Call Mai / Juni 2020 des Verbands für aktuelle Musik Hamburg, gefördert von der Behörde für Kultur und Medien Hamburg.
Weitere Projekte: https://www.vamh.de/index.php?what=online&year=2020&month=06