for piano and live electronics (2016, rev. 2024)

Commission by SIAE I Classici di Oggi for Stefano Malferrari
First Performance 2016 Ravenna Festival – Il nuovo e l’antico
Stefano Malferrari, piano | Alessandro Ratoci, live electronics
Revision 2024 for 22.Biennale Aktuelle Musik Bremen | Robert Fleitz, piano

East St. Louis, Illinois, is a limbo between city and desert. Once a thriving center of American culture and home to artists like Miles Davis and Tina Turner, it has since become a non-lieu, where nature slowly erases human presence. East St. Louis Blues is the result of a psychogeographic j ourney in search of Mi l es Davis’ ruins, undertaken during a residency at Missouri University.

The piece blends spectral analysis of early jazz recordings with live electronics, transforming echoes of blues and folk into an evolving, desolate soundscape. The listener is invited to get lost in this landscape—perhaps, with good ears and luck, finding beauty where others see only ruins.

“…a work musically beautiful, also emotionally moving in its sonic emergence as a true piano concerto with an orchestra of live electronics, masterfully constructed from a technical perspective… what a wealth of musical invention, what power of phrasing, what formal solidity…”

Bernardo Pieri – Rivista Musica, Zecchini Editore, No. 289, September 2017

CD Available at EMA Records https://www.emavinci.it/store/prodotto/classici-di-oggi-interpreti-vol-1-stefano-malferrari-pianoforte