Luciano Chessa, a contemporary composer, pianist, and musicologist, has an offbeat approach to his compositions and performances, mixing the traditional and the avant-garde. Born in Sardinia, Chessa studied music in Bologna and later received a Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis. He now teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
I’ve heard Chessa play in various public venues, but no doubt the most memorable performance for me took place a few years back at a dinner party in front of about seven people, including a couple of kids, at the house of a mutual friend. It was the first time I heard him play, and I recall being struck by his jazzy take on the staid Western European classics.
Later I came to understand how he often takes a playful attitude, not just toward the music itself, but toward the instruments—especially, it seems, the piano. Take his Variazioni su un oggetto di scena (a clip from “part two” of this piece accompanies my post). Here he places stuffed animals before the piano’s keys having them perform, as
Jonathan Wilkes [2] explains, “folk melodies at the keyboard, guided by human hands firmly gripping their little furry limbs.” Wilkes goes on, explaining how “[e]ach movement [has] its own animal, and each animal its own mitt size and, consequently, key cluster size.”
My curiosity is stirred merely by the description (in calendar listing below) of his Recitativo, aria e coro della Vergine, part of his Urlo impietrato. I haven’t heard the piece, but it promises to be a mix of influences—from African American to Sardinian, Baroque to avant-garde, all inspired by a fifteenth-century sculpture ("Lamentation over the Dead Christ").
Lucky for me, Chessa has a series of performances upcoming in the Bay Area (abbreviated descriptions below).
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February 11; 8:00 PM
Berkeley Art Festival
2213 Shattuck Avenue
Performances will include a set of Chessa’s own compositions for piano and electrified Vietnamese dan bau, as well as the American premiere of Francesco Cangiullo's Piedigrotta, a Futurist epic sound poem from 1916 about the explosive Neapolitan yearly street festival of the same name.
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February 22; 8:00 PM
Maybeck Studio
Including performances of Chessa’s Quadri da una città fantasma, the Variazioni su un oggetto di scena, and Louganis
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March 7, 3:00 P.M.
San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Recital Hall.
Luciano Chessa and Alden Jenks discuss their composition process as well as present some of their works.
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March 8 at 8:00 pm
Luciano Chessa: Recitativo, aria e coro della Vergine
San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Concert Hall
The BluePrint Series (Nicole Paiement, artistic director), in collaboration with the UC Davis Gospel Choir (Calvin Lymos, artistic director) present Recitativo, aria e coro della Vergine by Luciano Chessa. Recitativo, aria e coro della Vergine (2002) is the pivotal scene of Luciano Chessa’s Urlo impietrato, an in progress-oratorio based on one of Italy’s best kept secrets, Niccolò dell’Arca’s 1463 set of life-size terracotta sculptures known as Lamentation over the Dead Christ. A dialogue between such distant cultures as the Sardinian and the African American, and between Baroque opera and post-WW II Italian avant-garde, this scene harmonizes together, literally as well as allegorically, performers trained in up to five different vocal/instrumental styles, and clearly shows an author more interested in the epistemology—than he is in the science—of composing.
