JUSTE JANULYTE | LUCA SCARZELLA

20 october
Teatro Palladium

Can sound and image merge together and become one like sand running through a sandglass? The answer is given by “Sandglasses”, a multimedia concert created by Justė Janulytė and Luca Scarzella who—through their skillful use of technology—disassemble the spectator’s perception only to piece it together again in a highly unusual and emotional form.

We have four cellists cocooned within the same number of tulle cylinders, emblematically portray “Sandglasses”. Following their individual musical pulsations, each of the soloists weave their melodies while their tulle enclosed cocoons are filled with light and images including those of the same musicians. Together with the live music of the cellists, we have a veritable tapestry of image and sound in which live and artificial are no longer distinct, rather like an infinite number grains of sand flowing through an hourglass to create in the authors own words, a “Theatre of sound and visions”.

Their definition gives us the key to unlock the theme of this work which has brought together from its earliest stages its creators, the Gaida Ensemble soloists and innovative technology to portray an intimate fusion of sound and image on stage.

Considered as one of the young talents of the Lithuanian creative milieu, Janulytė  is now renowned outside her own country with her compositions featuring in international festivals such as the Venice Music Biennial, the Graz Musikprotokoll and the World New Music Days in Sweden and Huddersfield, United Kingdom. She favours a self-defined style of “Monochrome music” which does not mean that she avoids the infinite colours and “nuances” of sound but merely that her creations are written for ensembles of the same instrument or same family of instruments such as flutes, saxophones or stringed elements. In this performance, together with the sound of the cello, she shares the stage with an Italian video-artists who has often dedicated his own creative talent to musical themes. As a long-standing collaborator of Studio Azzurro, Scarzella’s work ranges from biographical films of great conductors such as Carlo Maria Giulini to the scenography for operas by Händel and Mozart and the installation and staging of contemporary musical works by composers such as Giorgio Battistelli, Luciano Berio and Luca Francesconi.