CD – 901

The synogram 間 (Ma), a minimal unit of meaning used in Japanese writing, expresses a decisive concept for numerous artistic and philosophical practices, referring to the notion of the space and time between things, focusing on the void more than the substance, returning to the value of pauses, of intervals. In music, attention to such voids not only has contemporary or Western relevance, as some might believe. Much has been said about pauses, about silence, in other historical and cultural contexts. Here it is in the oriental tradition that is engaged. Fabio Perletta and Luigi Turra, musicians both fascinated by the Zen approach and the work of the architect Tadao Ando, ​​decided to re-adapt a seminal sound study by Perletta, whose sounds were collected right in the conference pavilion designed by Ando for the Vitra campus in Weil am Rhein. The research is developed through three compositions, unravelled according to the senses of the places explored, with the sounds of woods, rocks, pebbles and concrete, all materials preferred by Ando, ​​who is particularly appreciated for his essential and evocative style. The sounds coexist with silences and are well-finished, intense and charismatic; the intent is to let oneself be engaged by architectural suggestions, alluding to the character of the spaces in an absolutely free and poetic way. If Ando’s style is said to create a “haiku” effect, emphasising the void and the empty space to represent the beauty of simplicity, similarly Perletta and Turra begin from rather sparse and basic samples, but manage to emotionally involve the listener in a path of a thousand abstractions and titillations. Other inspirations seem to come from the combination of traditional elements and modernist aesthetics, from an almost artisanal attention to detail and a hyper-controlled definition, all hallmarks of Ando’s poetics that seem to be engaged in this album. As the aesthete Fulvio Carmagnola once said, “the forms become in a certain sense illustrations, semi-opaque of an activity of thought that accompanies them. Adherent beauty, as the result of a project, even if it is a celibate project, detached from the register of practical ends “.

 

Fabio Perletta + Luigi Turra – Ma 間