Alberto Maniaci - Verso la luce (2021)

Simone Pirainos music is like a sea, the sea of Sicily: his compositions are on a journey in which music is the center of a quest for light and spirituality. In each composition of this work, we can perceive willingness to evoke the destiny of remote times, partly lost, made even more contemporary by the strength of memory that rises powerfully, creating refractions and reverberations with our time. As when picking petals from a flower, the ensemble grows smaller and smaller, from a quintetto to a solo piano. Twelve compositions that light up progressively like light bulbs, like a constellation of lights. Intimate chants, melodies and harmonic structures flow continuously. The strength of Simone Pirainos music lies in the evocation of the feelings and of the spirit: the musical figures develop, variate and regenerate like incorporeal intermediaries, like lights in motion. Beams of sounds seem to come from far-distant eras and across time. Poetry that becomes sound by distilling impulses and senses. The formal neatness and balance in the conduct of the lines that overlap in fabrics of harmonies and polyphonies create a continuous rising of ecstatic chants. When the listening is over, we are left with the feeling of being suspended with only the sky and the sea all around. Far away, a chant passes through everything as the moon is listening. (Marco Betta)