for soprano saxophone and live electronics (2022)

Commissione del festival ECHI di Arezzo
First Performance: Festival ECHI – TOCCAMI Centro Onda d’Urto, Arezzo (Italy)
Michele Bianchini, soprano saxophone and live electronics

Studio Mannaro is a cycle of compositions for saxophone in various ensembles. In Italian, “mannaro” typically refers to a shape-shifting creature, most commonly a werewolf, subtly suggesting the theme of metamorphosis at play. Beyond certain surface elements—such as the resemblance of specific gestures to cries or sonic clichés of animalistic fury—the saxophone reveals a “lycanthropic” quality in its ability to embody the impossible search for balance between two poles of sonic attraction, where the narrative sound is driven to transform by a sudden and irresistible impulse. Anyone who has psychologically experienced the inability to resist such a call—and the resulting sense of vertigo, fear, or pleasure—may recognize something of their own inner world in the contrasts between extremely slow and frenetically fast passages, between the purity of harmonic sound and noise saturation, and between rhythmic disorder and groove.