Paul Wertico - Paul Wertico's Drums Without Boundaries (Music by Cage, Wertico, Ugoletti, Scaglia, Pedrotti, Tasca) (2023)

One of the many aspects under which today’s world differs – and probably for the worse – from yesterday’s is what we could call the parcellation of culture. Each and every sector constitutes a field of hyper-specialization, hardly communicating with those surrounding it. Even in music, one needs only enter a record shop to see the albums neatly arranged under a number of categories, as if inspiration could be confined within the boundaries of a straightjacket of genres. Conversely, there is always the risk of reiterating what has already been said, of seeking the reassurance of a musical comfort zone, of remaining firmly within the domain of the “acceptable” and of the “usual”.
There is no such risk in Paul Wertico’s album issued here by Da Vinci Classics. There are no two pieces sounding alike, but, at the same time, the intensity of the musicians’ personality unifies and lends coherence and consistency to the whole album. Labels are almost impossible to find and to define; the pieces smartly elude all attempts at classification. This music is alive, even more than “live”; and, as happens to all living beings, it cannot be analyzed or vivisected. It pulsates, breathes, moves about and seeks its way with the unforeseeable spontaneity of an organism in full possession of its will and ability.
It is a music full of curiosity, which reveals the variety, diversity and heterogeneity of its sources of nourishment. Indeed, that living organism is omnivorous; its nurture and culture draw from a multiplicity of stimuli, which include musical genres, sounds, inspirations and features normally considered as reciprocally exclusive.
This music is not just beautiful to listen to; it is also an ideological manifesto, claiming, by its very existence, that most boundaries between musical genres are entirely artificial, arbitrary, and culturally construed. They cannot stand close scrutiny; they cannot survive the provocations, challenges and countercultural claims offered by the mere existence of this extraordinary album.
By browsing the pieces recorded here, one is amazed by the variety of sounds produced by Wertico and the fellow travelers of this exciting musical journey. The combinations of the instruments’ timbres are always changing, evolving and moving as if in a kaleidoscope. Each instrument has its own typical sound and – relatedly – its favourite expressive sphere; yet, by their interaction, they are subtly modified. By entering into a musical dialogue with other instruments, frequently radically different from each other, every instrument (and, of course, their players) undergoes a transformation. Far from flattening their diversity into homogeneity, this process accomplishes the impossible task of creating new musical hybrids. Just as happens in nature, these hybrids are not “half this, half that” – incomplete, bizarre, abstruse – but, instead, they are entirely new creatures, autonomous, self-standing, and bearing just a family resemblance with those whence they originate.
The zenith of this adventure is represented by the dialogue, at a distance, with John Cage’s Third Construction. Here, Cage’s piece was “discovered” step by step, note by note, by Wertico, who listened to it for the first time while improvising upon it. And here too we have an experience very similar to that of “lived life”. While technology allows us to repeatedly listen to a piece of music, and to a particular interpretation, in real life no performance is the same as another; imperfections are welcome, and the spontaneous process of discovery is akin to a reciprocal “taming” between composer and listener. Cage, who wrote the original Third Construction, and Wertico who improvised on it, are getting to know each other in spite of the temporal and spatial gap dividing them. Cage’s music reveals itself gradually, as happens with all temporal phenomena and with all friendships; Wertico’s receptivity is in turn unveiled and constantly challenged as the process progresses.
The result is a once-in-a lifetime experience, since after that enchanted moment the naivety of discovery is lost. Experience replaces enchantment, and knowledge somehow stifles the awe and excitement of a premiere. Fortunately, and even though no reproduction can replace a living being, that session had been recorded, and we are therefore allowed to observe, moment after moment, the process of veiling/unveiling/revealing taking place under our eyes.

Chiara Bertoglio