Sergio Sorrentino's magical art

SERGIO SORRENTINO promotes the classical guitar and electric guitar contemporary repertory.

As a composer and improviser his music is based on sonic research and combines elements of contemporary classical music, minimalism, avant-garde, ambient, experimental.

His CD Dream - American Music for Electric Guitar (Mode Records) contains works for electric guitar by John Cage, David Lang, Jack Vees, Elliott Sharp, Alvin Curran (a new piece especially written for this CD), Morton Feldman (world premiere recording on physical CD of "The Possibility of a New Work for Electric Guitar"), Christian Wolff (complete works for solo electric guitar and the world premiere of "Going West"), Larry Polansky, Van Stiefel.

Sergio Sorrentino Guitarist · Guitar Sounds

He plays with Gavin Bryars as a member of the Gavin Bryars Italian Ensemble and in duo with Elliott Sharp and John King. He studied with Francesco Langone, Angelo Gilardino, Mario Dell'Ara, Leo Brouwer, Mark White and composition with Marco Di Bari.

He has worked with Sylvano Bussotti, Azio Corghi, Bruno Canino, Alda Caiello, John Russell, Machinefabriek, Steven Mackey, Andrzej Bauer, Marco Angius, Giorgio Battistelli, Carlo Boccadoro, Mauro Bonifacio, I Solisti Aquilani. He plays in duo with Magnus Andersson and with the vibraphone player Antonio Caggiano. He has debuted many new guitar solo compositions. Alvin Curran, Mark Delpriora, Mauro Montalbetti, Stefano Taglietti, Gavin Bryars, Tom Armstrong have written special pieces just for him.

Tell us about Sylvano Bussoti, tell us a secret

It was a pleasure working with him on his great compositions… he is very kind and really a great composer. For the world premiere recording he gave me the manuscript of Popolaresca a very nice piece for solo guitar. I could tell you his secret… his profound and refined aesthetic sense, both as a composer and as a visual artist.

What have you found new in his work guitar compositions

I have found rare nuances, a unique guitar world,

a sort of well-defined theatrical character,

with original timbres and sounds

What relationship would you find between Morton Feldman and Jimi Hendrix?

Uh…great question! I think they have a common search for the transcendent and for sound experimentation. Even Feldman, like Hendrix, wanted to completely transform the electric guitar's soul and sound.

suoni possibili · White Buffalo Calf Woman Blues

What is the role of the guitar in contemporary music?

Both of them -classical and electric guitar- play a fundamental role in today's music. They make their own particular timbres available to composers and allow the achievement of truly unique sound solutions...

Are there new searches in the contemporary sound field? In what way do they relate to the tradition of sound?

Sound experimentation is part of the deep soul of the guitar. All the new experiments, somehow, have their roots in musical traditions of the past, if only for the primitiveness and archaicity of the guitar sound.
The most interesting experiments refer to the electronic research and to the research on the overtones of the long sustained notes of the guitar...

What is possible in Music?

Everything.

It is a magical art, as it is abstract.

So we can accomplish anything, even our wildest dreams.

How would you define your physical relationship with the guitar?

Carnal.

The sense of touch on the strings is fundamental for me,

as well as feeling its vibrations on my arms,

on my stomach,

on my legs...

What is the most interesting thing about collaborating with someone in your work, be it a composer, interpreter or any type of collaborator?

The most interesting thing is to be able to always learn something.

After finishing my studies, my most useful "master classes" were just being able to learn on the field, directly playing with great musicians and collaborating with great composers.

A composer and a why? A sonorous moment in your life and a why?

Philip Glass, because I love his music and I admire his professional career and his musical and entrepreneurial intuitions.

A sonorous moment…maybe a few years ago during a concert in my hometown.

I was playing in the wonderful convent that I frequented as a child.

I was playing my improvisation on the loop machine.

I felt in paradise, and I played thinking about my father and grandmother who are no longer here with us.

And I felt very deep, inexplicable sensations.

ANTS RECORDS · Elliott Sharp & Sergio Sorrentino - Spillà

Where do you get the strength to continue?

I have a mission: To express myself with my music and to develop the contemporary guitar repertoire…and also… I’m workaholic 🙂

I always need to have more and more projects to work on ... often simultaneously 🙂

Where are you going?

I think I’m going in a new direction. I am writing and recording my compositions and improvisations more and more. But I will also continue to perform the pieces of other composers. I am going to release a new album of original compositions and I will continue my fantastic collaborations with Elliott Sharp, John King and many other great musicians.

Also, I would like to return to play live as soon as possible! I will do it in the summer, as a soloist and in duo with the great double bass player Daniele Roccato.

And I hope soon to be able to do the concerts in New York that were canceled last April due to the lockdown.

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Charlie Rauh ~ The Bluebell

NYC based guitarist/composer Charlie Rauh has been invited to be resident composer by such organizations as the Rauschenberg Foundation, Klaustrid Foundation, and the Chen Dance Center. His work as a soloist has been supported by grants from Meet The Composer, The Untitled Artist Group, and The Fractured Atlas Group. Rauh’s approach to solo guitar composition takes inspiration from folk lullabies, plainchant, and the imagery of various poets ranging from the Brontës to Anna Akhmatova. Acoustic Guitar Magazine notes that “Charlie Rauh plays guitar with a quiet intensity, each note and chord ringing with purpose… With these lullabies, Rauh gives a gentle reminder that playing soft and slow can be more impactful than loud and fast.”. He presents us his brand new release in Destiny Records

The Bluebell is the third solo album from guitarist and composer Charlie Rauh, following 2019’s Hiraeth, which garnered enthusiastic response from the press as music with “a quiet intensity, each note and chord ringing with purpose. With these lullabies Rauh gives a gentle reminder that playing soft and slow can be more impactful than loud and fast” (Acoustic Guitar Magazine). The Bluebell continues Rauh’s stylistic hallmark of spacious solo guitar composition, while giving greater depth to this set by taking on the beloved poetry of Emily and Anne Brontë as its creative inspiration. Titled after a small flower familiar to the landscape of the Brontës’ homeland in Northern England, and a subject of both authors’ writing, the songs of The Bluebell emerge as thoughtful, pensive, and reverent interpretations of the poems from which they draw inspiration. Recorded in the home where Rauh spent his youth and his father taught him guitar, the nine miniature songs weave, ring, and decay as they alternate between selections of Emily and Anne’s poems of childhood, growth, persistence, and wonder. As heard on Hiraeth, Rauh’s combination of finger style and flat picked guitar playing evokes echoes of medieval modal movements intertwined with smoky Appalachian melodies that add a unique

As a support musician, Rauh works with a variety of artists across several genres both as a touring sideman and a studio musician and arranger. Recording projects include work with Wilco drummer Ken Coomer, Magnetic Fields producer Charles Newman, and Sparklehorse contributor Alan Weatherhead. Live performances include artists such as Pulitzer nominee Cornelius Eady, Rolling Stones backing vocalist Bernard Fowler, Iranian pop innovator Sepideh, and Finnish indie artist Peppina.

A song inspired by Anna Akhmatova's poem, The Sentence,

featuring Sónia André singing

The solo guitar version can be heard on Hiraeth, Destiny Records 2019

1 As in the story of “The Emperor's Suit”, the global crisis has put the weakest parts of our model of life in tension. The problem of art in general, in a world with an exaggerated technical-economic drift is one of them. What role does it occupy and what role should it occupy, when it is one of the functions that tends to be cut most violently in a process of crisis. Is art fundamental or can we just do without it

 CS Lewis once wrote that “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” The fundamental role that art plays in our existence is rooted in relation. The ache for purpose is intrinsic in the creating of art, and the action of art is one of extension in the most intimate of ways.  Without art, the world would continue.  But it's the invitation to wonder that inspires humanity to reach for greater heights, and that is what art provides.

A lullaby inspired by Anne Brontë’s poem, The Bluebell.

Filmed by Eric Skye

2 Within art, How does music contribute to today's society

Music contributes a universal bond that asks for nothing, and gives everything. To listen to music, and to be nourished by it, requires no prerequisite.  Someone can hear a piece of music and think nothing of it, while the person next to them can have their life changed by the same piece.  Within the context of art, music offers us a glimpse into the eternal.

3 The role of the musician is increasingly difficult. It is a great challenge to dedicate himself exclusively to his work, as he is being pushed out of the economic environment. It is very difficult to be able to be dedicated professionally and exclusively to creation, and the digital world is progressively moving the musician away from being able to live from the commercialization of his products. What panorama awaits us if one of your last sources of income is reduced, those derived from physical presence, concerts

I choose to adapt in every way that I am able to.  With travel and performance (my main income source for over a decade) no longer an option for the foreseeable future, I have pivoted to taking on remote session work from my home studio set up combined with teaching online to bring in my income.  I also try to stay productive as a composer by taking in inspiration from research and interpreting literature that I find inspiring in order to create music that I believe is worth offering to the world.



4 In this troubled time, what motivates you to keep making work for the public

In a way, the creation and release of music is a form of sonar for me.  I do want to share my music, as I am proud of it and hope people will enjoy it, but it's also a way to search for kindreds. When I release new music, there's always an underlying beacon sent out to see who else feels what I feel.  In addition, the hope is that I can offer inspiration and likewise be inspired.  

When I started  to promote The Bluebell, I wound up getting in touch with DM Denton, a brilliant author and Brontë researcher.  We have since been promoting each other's work - with my song composed after Anne Brontë's poem being the backdrop to the trailer for her book, Without The Veil Between, Anne Brontë  A Fine and Subtle Spirit.  There is no finer example than this regarding my motivation.

2020 is the bicentennial of the birth of Anne Brontë.

"This novel portrait gives us Anne. Not Anne, the ‘less gifted’ sister of Charlotte and Emily; nor the Anne who ‘also wrote two novels’, but Anne herself, courageous, committed, daring and fiercely individual: a writer of remarkable insight, prescience and moral courage whose work can still astonish us today." ~ D. Bennison, Bennison Books

5 What would you say are the main concerns within your sound search Those that you persecute, hide, transform, those that remain and excite you, or even hypnotize you.

The central intention that I focus on in my sound is distillation.  I am trying to develop a sound that has only what needs to be there and absolutely nothing else.  Two years ago I transitioned to exclusively playing acoustic guitar for my solo compositions after 20 years of exclusively playing electric.  I had always played electric guitar with ambient effects to create space and atmosphere, but then realized I was straying very far from what I heard in my head, and the sound was not personal or unique to me as an artist.  

Composing on acoustic steel string guitar has opened my ears to true atmosphere - the reverb on my albums now is whatever naturally occurs in the space I choose to record, and 'effects' are whatever sounds naturally occur in the space that the mic pics up.  I only record my solo pieces in remote locations (so far a barn in France, a small cottage on Captiva Island, the dining room in the house I grew up in).   I am fascinated by space in sound.  My hope is that I can learn to be patient and attentive to the minutia of tone, and create microcosmic pieces of music that emerge more is magnifying glasses than megaphones.

 

6 How would you describe the influence of poetry on your music 

I am deeply affected by poetry in that its delivery seeks to be concise, impactful, and memorable.  When I read poets like Anne and Emily Brontë, I immediately feel inspired to respond.  Its almost like having a conversation with them when I compose.  I want to create music that listens as a poem reads - that lingers in the aftermath, and that settles in a sacred place.

A view into The Bluebell - a collaborative project bewteen myself and my two siblings, Nini and Chris. I composed a cycle of solo acoustic guitar lullabies inspired by the poems of Anne and Emily Brontë, and handed off the music to my brother and sister. They in turn combined their original paintings, miniature word responses, and our own messages to eachother to rereceate a personal rendition of an historic and treasured document. Anne and Emily would often write accounts of their lives, minds, and hearts illuminated by sketches, and crosswriting techiniques (writing a letter with both horizontal and vertical lines) in their now famous Diary Papers. For the release of this album, my sister has constructed a limited edition of 30 Diary Paper sets to be made available with the purchase of the digital release album. footage by Christina Rauh Fishburne

7 How would you define your use of the guitar?

I use the guitar as a means to deliver subtlety and delicacy.  I am interested in the small details of overtones, note decay, left hand dynamics, and bare melody.  I love the idea of the guitar being a free standing sound that very much sounds like one guitar alone.  Solo guitar is often marked by finding ways to emulate several voices at once (which is beautiful), but I am not interested in doing that. I use the guitar to attempt a clear, solitary voice.

 

New England Plains Drifter (time lapse painting) - Charlie Rauh & Cameron Mizell 

8 I find in this new work a specific intimate search. Contained forms, songs or ballads or lullabies that would find a classic definition when one is alone, he sings to accompany himself. As I listen to your work, a work that always impressed me comes to my memory Silent Music by Federico Mompou. How do intimacy and distance matter in your work.

This new album is very intimate and personal, yes.  The songs on The Bluebell are all written about poems by Emily and Anne Brontë, two of my favorite writers.  They shared a very special bond amongst their other siblings and their family, and their poetry has deeply inspired me for some time.  Intimacy is an essential factor in my music.  I feel in my attempts to express intimate detail though composing, I am able to likewise purely expound emotionally.  For many years I avoided openly calling on emotions to compose, because I never felt that I was capable of genuinely accomplishing it.  But through the inspiration of poetry in my composing, I have found permission to feel.

Already madness, with its wing,

Covers a half of my heart, restless,

Gives me the flaming wine to drink

And draws into the vale of blackness.

I understand that just to it

My victory has to be given,

Hearing the ravings of my fit,

Now fitting to the stranger’s living. 

And nothing of my own past

It’ll let me take with self from here

(No matter in what pleas I thrust

Anna Akhmatova. Requiem 1935-1940

9 Three simple words: Poetry, Painting, Music

Poetry nourishes my thoughts, Painting contextualizes the importance of small details, and music provides a vehicle to act. 

10 How do you see your next step? Where would you place your fears and illusions right now?

I plan on continuing to compose solo guitar music, and adapting to the state of things however I am required to. I feel a spiritual void from not being able to travel, meet new people,  and experience new things (I'm sure most of us do).  All I feel that I can do is to continue, and do so with hope and faith.  

B&W Photos: Alice Teeple

Charlierauh.com/