Memorie - Nicoletta Taricani
A journey into the folds of the feminine, a tribute to the value, creativity of an extraordinary artist in balance between tradition, innovation, and commitment. The twenty-seventh production of nusica.org, a cultural association that supports and promotes innovative artists with the motto: "Developing Artists, Blossoming Music." Nicoletta Taricani's new work, "Memorie," will be released on March 18, 2024. The project is preceded by the release of the single "Letizia," available from March 8. Music, narration, and commitment intertwine in Nicoletta Taricani's journey, a singer born in Sicily, now living in Udine, always attentive to contaminations as an artistic and social tool, a fundamental feature of her music and a reflection of the places she has experienced.
After her debut work "In un mare di voci" (2021), a social inclusion project focused on the dialogue between music and acting, the artist creates "Memorie," an album full of suggestions and an evocative journey that reveals the sense of a search both human and intellectual, intimate and artistic.
Centered around the figure of Letizia Battaglia, the work represents for Nicoletta Taricani the opportunity to give substance to her idea of music, the belief that composing is equivalent to photographing, capturing what the eye sees in perfect balance with one's inner horizon.
The album, scheduled for release on March 18 with the nusica.org label, is a musical portrait of the famous photojournalist, research that revolves around the key moments of her career, from shots of women and children to snapshots in the alleys of Palermo, from the years of terrorism to Mafia crimes.
Nine tracks tell a story, making experimentation, jazz, and folklore a terrain of artistic and cultural elaboration. Like in "Memorie," where the noise of the streets, the cries of the people after the killing of Judge Falcone form the basis for a musical reportage. Or "Letizia," characterized by the balance between popular sounds and modern elements, summarizing Battaglia's attitude and Taricani's artistic perspective. The third single is "Real Casa dei matti," a title that recalls the psychiatric hospital frequented by the photojournalist in contact with patients, who speak about loneliness and hope in the lyrics. "Le foto che non ho fatto" (The photos I didn't take) and "Le bambine di Palermo" (The girls of Palermo) encapsulate the tension of Battaglia towards discovery, revealing the elements of wonder and investigation, combining simple melodies and frequent tempo changes.
"Comitato di lenzuoli" and "Palermo" give the sense of a place, narrating a multifaceted and dynamic city, between the sounds of bells and frenetic rhythms. Claudia Grimaz, another woman, appears in the album; she is honored in the Serbian traditional song "Gusta mi magla padnala," with which Taricani won the Grimaz Prize in 2023.
All compositions, except for the last one, were written and arranged by Nicoletta Taricani. Her voice is accompanied by Giulio Scaramella on the piano, Marco Donat on the violin, Romano Todesco on the accordion, Mattia Romano on the guitar, Alessio Zoratto on the double bass, and Umberto Odone on the drums.
Nicoletta Taricani was born in Syracuse in 1992 and has been living in Udine since 2004. She graduated from the "Jacopo Tomadini" Conservatory in Udine in October 2020 in jazz singing with Gluaco Venier and Alfonso Deidda. In March 2023, she obtained a second-level degree in jazz singing with top marks and honors from the "Giuseppe Tartini" Conservatory in Trieste, studying with Daniela Spalletta. Her debut album, "In un mare di voci" (2021), was presented with the collaboration of investigative journalist Fabrizio Gatti (Terzani Prize 2008): a cultural project of social integration that uses music and narration to tell the migrant journey in the Mediterranean.
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Who is Antelope Cobbler?
Marco Cesarini & Henry Mclusky
A story of atmospheres and dreams, teetering between reality and vision. A reflection on noir and its stylistic elements, on the codes of interpreting reality, with a dreamlike and mysterious gaze.
The twenty-eighth production for nusica.org, a cultural association supporting and promoting innovative artists.
The new work by Marco Cesarini & Henry Mclusky will be released on April 18, 2024. The album is preceded by the release of the single "Cani randagi," available from April 12.
Starting from an original concept, that of "noir" music, the new work by Marco Cesarini, guitarist, multi-instrumentalist, and composer from Pesaro, will be released on April 18 with the music label nusica.org. Who is Antelope Cobbler? is a multi-form and visionary audio-visual project, a journey through symbols and codes that, by suggestion, refer to the cinema of David Lynch and his enigmatic universe.
For Cesarini, always interested in the territories of the imaginary whose ambiguous, never pacified contours constitute a zone of exploration, reconstruction, and artistic discovery, Who is Antelope Cobbler? represents a means of investigation into reality, an attempt to focus on its margins, aware of an elusive sense, detached from predisposed categories.
In this perspective, the album constitutes a natural continuation of the ideas born and experimented with in the musician's previous albums (Transumanza; Transumanza Vol II Vulnus) realized with Uqbar Orchestra, a "liquid" and prismatic formation, born to adapt to multiple needs, a multi-form project that changes and reduces depending on the contexts.
Who is Antelope Cobbler? now marks the birth of a new formation, Marco Cesarini & Henry Mclusky, the name and pseudonym of the artist who here constructs a story revolving around the "truth of the invisible," the points of view that multiply and make reality a boiling magma.
Thus, Cesarini invents a character, Henry Mclusky, who as an investigator is called to probe the mysteries of a reality that is both intimate and objective, where gazes, questions, turn into melodies and timbral, rhythmic, and harmonic balances, but also into noises depending on the "case" on display. Composing, for the musician, is indeed equivalent to investigating to find the solution to an enigma, in search of one's formal truth.
The story of Who is Antelope Cobbler? is further enriched by the illustrations of the artist Aliena Wrobleski (alias Margherita Baldelli) which, together with the written narrative, constitute a means to navigate through the compositions, following the footsteps of classical music librettos.
The noir imaginary revisited by Cesarini thus gives rise to layered suggestions, drawing from jazz to reach more intense, dissonant atmospheres, in a journey to the end of surrealism which is ultimately an interrogation on oneself, on history, on human relationships.
Constructed as an itinerary on the traces of Antelope Cobbler, the album opens with "Il cuore di Henry" and arrives at the "Soluzione finale" in a game of references that make each track a piece of a potentially endless puzzle.
Several musicians who have collaborated with Cesarini in the Uqbar Orchestra formation are present on the album: Jean Gambini (tenor saxophone and double bass), Andrea Angeloni (trombone, tuba, and euphonium), Davide Mazzoli (drums), Giacomo Del Monte (percussion). Alongside them are also Naima Gambini (violin) and Marco Rossi (cello).
In live performances, the band will move as a quartet/quintet depending on the occasion.
Marco Cesarini was born in 1984 and privately studied electric bass and guitar. During his teenage years, he formed several bands playing original music: Nolo Uma, jazz-rock Band, Brambate. He then formed Windom Earle and graduated from the Academy of Modern Music (AMM) studying electric bass, arrangement, and jazz composition with Lorenzo De Angeli, Marco Pacassoni, and Enzo Bocciero. Together with Davide Mazzoli, he formed Telios De Lorca, an electroacoustic music duo, collaborating with the painter Giuliano Del Sorbo for a Live Painting show, "Paintheatre." In 2021, during the Covid19 quarantine period, he founded the Uqbar Orchestra formation, with which he realized the project titled Transumanza followed, in 2023, by Trasumanza vol II – Vulnus. In addition to his work with bands, in recent years he has collaborated on soundtracks for three documentaries and a short film by the director and videomaker Filippo Biagianti, "Noi Partigiani-Storie di resistenza," "Dalla semina al cielo," "Selenik Le tre stagioni di Salonicco," and the short film "Sa 'ilgiadora de su tempus." In 2023, he composed and curated the audio for a podcast commissioned by "Doctors for Human Rights" produced by the Nouvelle Plague theater company on migrants traveling the Balkan route to arrive in Val di Susa and then pass the French border. The "Marco Cesarini & Henry Mclusky" project arises from the need to address other themes, responding to a precise narrative method, which is the basis of his artistic writing.
