Sound artist and composer Alessandro Bosetti paints a series of portraits from a collection of conversations recorded in Italy over the course of a Summer.
Bosetti chose and collected four voices articulated over three generations, two female and two male. He then disassembled them and put them together in a palimpsest that integrates three elements: a polyphonic writing – collage of thousands of fragments and vocal writing for a portraitist – an electroacoustic writing and an immersive scenic writing.
Such palimpsest translated both into a music theatre and hörspiel portraying a family of incorporeal voices, performed by Alessandro Bosetti along with Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, and featuring the costume design by Canedicoda.
The "Portraits de Voix" take now the shape of a physical release, wisely mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi, featuring once again the artwork and design by
Canedicoda.
– What do you want from me ?
– I'd like to make a portrait of your voice.
– It's my portrait then ?
– No. I think that you and your voice are not the same thing.
A family of voices lives its sonic life. A tangle of sounds and affections suspended between Renaissance polyphony and family din. Voices have no body, at least here. Each one is mother, father, daughter and sister of one or the other.
The family is in turn dismantled and reunited. Real dramas are unleashed between the voices: bonds, separations, friendships and love...
A cloud of voices, charged like a storm, brings to life all the immersive emotions of an imaginary and magical community.
The portraitist shares this choral narrative with the listener, who finds themself immersed in a very tight crowd, both claustrophobic and nourishing, just like every family.
The family of voices is torn between a rigid division of roles and its proliferating abstract and fragmented phonetic ration.
Here, bodily, physical and political identities count for little: only the voices count, which, as markers of absolute generality, resemble souls to whom an identity has not yet been attributed.
Alessandro Bosetti (born 1973 in Milan, lives and works in Marseille) is a composer and sound artist who focuses is in the fringe area between spoken language and music, working on the musicality of spoken words and unusual aspects of spoken communication, producing text-sound compositions featured in live performances, radio broadcastings and published recordings. In his work he moves across the line between sound anthropology and composition, often including translation and misunderstanding in the creative process. Field research and interviews build the basis for abstract compositions, along with electro-acoustic and acoustic collages, relational strategies, trained and untrained instrumental practices, vocal explorations and digital manipulations.
Bosetti created a series of highly compelling sound works where
relational aesthetics meets innovative composition and published more than a dozen of cd's of his own music along with countless other collaborations. Since 2000 he has been a key Ars Acustica figure, and created a vast body of electro acoustic and text sound works for institutions as WDR Studio Akustische Kunst, DeutschlandRadio and
GRM among many other . Pieces like
Il Fiore della Bocca (Rossbin/DLR 2005)—a work on the vocality of the mentally and physically impaired— and
African Feedback—a collaborative scrutiny on experimental music in West Africa—(
Errant Bodies Press, 2004) have received wide recognition and are considered classic contributions to the genre. Alessandro Bosetti is an emotional performer that has consistently toured in Europe, Asia and the United States as a soloist, leading his speech ensemble Trophies with
Tony Buck and Kenta Nagai and in collaborations with fellow vocal performers as Jennifer Walshe and Tomomi Adachi and with pianist
Chris Abrahams.
