Giacomo Cuticchio Ensemble - Giacomo Cuticchio: Concerto mediterraneo (2018)

I know Giacomo, if not from his birth, at least from the early years when he began to express the desire to become a composer, a profession he approached very young, as a musician at the service of the paternal Cunti. The Opera dei Pupi performed regularly at the Accademia Filarmonica Romana, and the technical director of the Academy Alfred Silbermann, the unforgettable Moni, recommended this young promise to me. As I usually do with other young people, I tried to dissuade him … Is it then a real job do the composer today? In this XXI century in which the art of sounds has become an old residue, in a society submerged by sounds: close, far, looming from all sides, exotic, recorded, transmitted and consumed in restaurants elevator, from supermarkets to Youtube, hungry monster, always in operation. A sound background that seems cicadas and that nobody listens carefully. So the young composer of today is without rules, submerged by this confusion and at risk of confusion. Not my friend Giacomo, who learned from his famous father how to communicate music in a direct and exemplary way, as well as mastering the Arte dei Pupi. He possesses a clear style, as transparent as the Sicilian sea to which it is inspired. The rhythm recalls Paladini and rethinks in a personal way the American influences of Philip Glass and Terry Riley, not refusing to use repetitive modules, but on harmonic basses obstinate with old origins from Renaissance dances: follies, pavanes and sarabandes. Melodies with a personal inflexion that evoke an echo of flamenco singing, as well as the plashing on the shoreline under the scorching sun, or the trumpet of battles against Moors. An overlapping of polyrhythmical effects, sometimes very personal. The instrumentation in addition to the piano “conductor” played by the author is created with primary colours never fused together, like a Mondrian’s picture, entrusted to the talented soloists of his Ensemble, of which I was one of the first supporters already years ago, touring in Salento. Now it is time for him to advance, without losing the Compass Rose and the tempting blue sea, leading the boat of invention among waves, full rudder towards new lands.