Frédéric Acquaviva

 
Frédéric Acquaviva, born in 1967, has been since 1990 a sound artist and experimental music composer, creating chronopolyphonic installations and CDs and playing in art galleries, in museums or in underground venues.
Staying away from traditional networks of musicians and composers, he meets and works with historical figures in art, poetry or video, sometimes a long time before their being discovered by the media. He has collaborated this way with Isidore Isou, Maurice Lemaître, Marcel Hanoun, Pierre Guyotat, Jean-Luc Parant, mezzo-soprano Loré Lixenberg, film maker FJ Ossang and choreographer Maria Faustino, among others.
His astonishing music, in which he chooses an experimental presentation using, is constantly exploring, always in new ways, the relationship between voice and language, sound and its meaning, even the idea of physical body sounds integrated into the musical composition, kept away from the concert hall's diffusions (acousmatic or sound installations). As the critic Eric Vautrin remarked in Mouvement magazine, his work is not a “sound work but a work about sound”.
Acquaviva has become not only one of the essential protagonists of the rediscovery of historical avant-garde, more precisely of Lettrism (Isidore Isou, Gabriel Pomerand, Maurice Lemaître, Gil J Wolman, Jean-Louis Brau, Jacques Spacagna, François Dufrêne, Roland Sabatier, Alain Satié, Broutin), but of Sound Poetry (Henri Chopin, Bernard Heidsieck), and has worked with some unique and outstanding historical figures (Pierre Albert-Birot, Otto Muehl). He has done this through his knowledge of and interest in different disciplines: editing books, curating art exhibitions, being an events creator, lecturing, establishing catalogue raisonnés and bibliographic databases, creating radiophonic works, being an art critic, a filmmaker, and a publisher, with Editions Derrière la Salle de Bains or for his own editions: AcquAvivA, and the magazine CRU.

See also Yoann Sarrat : Phonosophie et corporalité compositionnelle – L'art sonore de Frédéric Acquaviva

(external link : www.frederic-acquaviva.net)
 
Frédéric Acquaviva - No Soy Un Robot (CD)
2023
AcquAvivA
For countertenor, parrots, different voices & dead electronics.
Frédéric Acquaviva - Enquête de flagrance pour musique létale
2022
French edition
Les presses du réel – Music & Sound Arts – Al Dante
Al Dante - Contemporary Art
Frédéric Acquaviva, as Mozart of the assize court, questions, in this only known example of judicial sound art, justice and its functioning, but especially insists on the fragile barrier which separates criminals from honest composers.
Frédéric Acquaviva - [səminal] (CD)
2022
AcquAvivA
A composition in two continuous parts of 30' and 19' which melts two antagonistic and complementary dimensions: a data-text read by the French artist ORLAN and a virtual orchestra, composed of four singers (Loré Lixenberg, Joan La Barbara, Wills Morgan and Jacques Lizène) and 124 different instruments.
Frédéric Acquaviva - Musique cabalistique
2022
bilingual edition (English / French)
Les presses du réel – Music & Sound Arts – Al Dante
Al Dante - Contemporary Art
A gallery of portraits of people listening to a work by Frédéric Acquaviva in progress, laid out like a flip book.
Frédéric Acquaviva - Antipodes
2020
AcquAvivA
Frédéric Acquaviva's new record—A QR code record without record limited to 100 copies: a 69 minutes opera for voices (with Joël Hubaut, who also wrote the text, Dorothy Iannone and Loré Lixenberg), dead electronics and video.
Frédéric Acquaviva - Isidore Isou
2019
French edition
Editions du Griffon - Monographs & catalogues
Reference monograph.
Frédéric Acquaviva - £pØ@n®diØ$n - Concerto for town and voice – With Loré Lixenberg (CD)
2018
AcquAvivA
Concerto for town and voice created from recordings collected the same day in London and Paris, and illuminated by the voice of mezzo-soprano Loré Lixenberg.
Frédéric Acquaviva - FREEING (Our Bodies) - La musique de Frédéric Acquaviva
2018
French edition
FREEING (Our Bodies)
The second issue of the magazine FREEING (Our Bodies) is dedicated to the musical work of Frédéric Acquaviva: some forty prestigious contributors (Jean-François Bory, Broutin, Laurent Cauwet, Henri Chopin, Jacques Donguy, Michel Giroud, Bernard Heidsieck, Joël Hubaut, Dorothy Iannone, Otto Muehl, Virgile Novarina, ORLAN, Jean-Luc Parant…) examine and pay tribute to this original creator through poetic texts, portraits, drawings, photographs, interviews, chronicles…
Frédéric Acquaviva - The 120 Days of Musica
2018
English edition
Les presses du réel – Music & Sound Arts – Al Dante
Al Dante - Contemporary Art
120 true and oxymoronesque scores-instructions composed by Frédéric Acquaviva between 2015 and 2017 in Berlin.
Frédéric Acquaviva - The 120 Days of Musica - Luxury Edition (+ CD)
2018
English edition
Les presses du réel – Music & Sound Arts – Al Dante
Al Dante - Contemporary Art
120 true and oxymoronesque scores-instructions composed by Frédéric Acquaviva between 2015 and 2017 in Berlin. Luxury limited edition, signed, including an original artwork and the sound artwork “Oxymoron Music” on CD.
Frédéric Acquaviva - Mess - 2015-2017 (CD)
2018
AcquAvivA
A piece for mezzo, mouths, skins and Buchla, recorded with mezzo-soprano Loré Lixenberg (vinyl sleeve with a CD inside).
Frédéric Acquaviva - Du singe au porc / Ape to Pig (DVD)
2018
AcquAvivA
DVD gathering the video recordings of two musical performances by Frédéric Acquaviva, in French and English, made at EMS in Stockholm and La Plaque tournante in Berlin.
Frédéric Acquaviva - Oreilles Vides
2017
AcquAvivA
Double QR-Code LP (an empty sleeve with no discs), edition of 100 copies. The recording to listen online is a 5-hour composition for computer voice, first presented in Paris on March 25, 2000: a deepening of the idea of a dematerialized disc.
Frédéric Acquaviva - Kiss Music (vinyl EP)
2016
AcquAvivA
First QR-Code EP, edition of 100 copies, recorded at EMS, Stockholm, December 2015, with the voices of Frédéric Acquaviva and Loré Lixenberg.
Frédéric Acquaviva - Loré Ipsum (3 CD)
2015
AcquAvivA
A piece for voice(s) an dead electronics with Loré Lixenberg (mezzo-soprano).
Frédéric Acquaviva - Aatie (opéra-monde) (CD / DVD)
2012
AcquAvivA
A piece for mezzo-soprano, voices, instrumental ensemble, electronics and videos (with a DVD, with no sound, to synchronise, or not, with the CD).
Frédéric Acquaviva - O(E)uvre (1990) (CD)
1990
AcquAvivA
For his first ever conceptual piece from 1990, Frédéric Acquaviva collaborated with Australian pianist Mark Knoop on the recording of all harmonic frequencies using only the damper pedal of a piano.


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