BlueRing Improvisers - Materia, Pt. 2 (Cretti) (2020)

BlueRing Improvisers is a container for musicians and artists who feel the need to transcend what is already known to undertake a path of personal and collective research. We call it now music, the music that represents the expressive urgency of the moment (historical, cultural and personal) in which it is conceived, but also of the instant in which it is performed. Collaboration with artists from other disciplines is the usual element of our practice. We have worked over the years with graphic designers, painters, dancers, actors, visual artists. The focus on a non-musical artistic object serves us to find a common direction and a shared representation, to trigger new mental paths, to try new methods and to test new ideas.

In this album, we focused on the works of Italian artist Alberto Burri, who was a great experimenter of the 20th century, a revolutionary both in terms of the tools he used in his creative process and the materials that he shaped, usually unconventional, taken from extra-artistic contexts.

This is how Materia was born, an ensemble that not only draws its poetics from Burri, but also its methodological approach. We composed and improvised music with particular attention to putting the material element of sound at the center of our research. We sought to enhance the gesture as a means of expression, creating a compositional-performative environment in which sounds and noises, musical instruments and objects, and a range of performing techniques coexist in balance. Moreover, chance and the only partial control of the physical aspects of sound play a fundamental role, while digging into the timbre of the single instrument.

After a preliminary study of Burri’s methods and aesthetics, we started from his works, using them as reference and inspiration for some compositions or using them directly as evocative scores, obtaining this way a collection of pieces organized by the materials used by Burri (Materia) and the timbral variety of the instruments (Creti).

With the help of extremely creative musicians, we were able to communicate deeply with our materials, working and living together for days in a Tuscan farmhouse surrounded by nature. During this period of artistic residence, we recorded the work that you can hear on this double album.