Futurist soireé
"In antiquity, life was nothing but silence".
It was nothing but this statement, this quotation from the introduction to The Art of Noises manifesto by Luigi Russolo, that inspired us to start contemplating our own music contribution to the futurist theme. These contemplations date back to the nineties, when our ensemble Opening Performance Orchestra did not even exist yet and when our music works were only being composed in our thoughts, discussions and speculations. A real impulse came in 2013, seven years after the formation of the Opening Performance Orchestra: the ensemble was invited by Martin Klimeš, a founder of the club Bludný kámen (Erratic Boulder), to participate in thethird year of the Minimarathon of electronic music, which is held as a biennial of the Ostrava festival of contemporary music called Ostrava Days. That year of the festival was dedicated to Italian futurists to commemorate the one-hundred-year anniversary of Russolo's manifesto The Art of Noises. Our original intention was to present our contribution, called The Noise of Art, as a purely digital noise performance with text extracts from the Russolo's manifesto in the original interpretation of Pavel Z, a poet, musician and founder of DG 307 band. At the same time, however, we left open the possibility of acquiring an intonarumori, because the idea of using these original instruments of Italian futurists as a sound essence was very tempting for us. The first testing prototype of intonarumori was constructed for us at no charge by Milan Guštar, a composer, electronic equipment designer and programmer. The professional production was laterprovided by Jan Kolář, a cabinetmaker and a technical jack-of-all-trades. The use of intonarumori was preceded by numerous consultations concerning the construction and sound parametres of these instruments with Werner Durand, a German musician and performer, and Luciano Chessa, an Italian composer and conductor, founder of the Orchestra of Futurist Noise Intoners ensemble.
After an intense and noisy celebration of The Art of Noises at the Ostrava Minimarathon, our intonarumoris were heard at the benefit concert for the music magazine HIS Voice in a revised version of The Noise of Art composition. For the next three years, they were waiting for another chance to come. The opportunity came inthe autumn of 2015, when the Czech Radio invited us for the event called Art's Birthday 2016, which had been organized by the Czech Radio since 2005 and which was dedicated among others to music invasions of Italian futurists. For this event we decided to prepare a purely acoustic composition named Futuristic Soirée, which was performed by four other soloists in addition to three intonarumoris. We composed three enharmonic parts for intonarumori and the violinists David Danel and Tomáš Vtípil prepared variations and improvisations of music quotations of a futuristic theme and of other avantgarde music movements of the last century. Pavel Z and Phaerentz performed extracts of texts from the original futuristic manifestos – the Futuristic Manifesto by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and the Manifesto of Futurist Musicians by Balilla Pratella. The concert that took place in the premises of the Trade Fair Palace of the National Gallery in Prague was broadcasted live in nineteen European public radio stations associated in the Euroradio Ars Acustica Group.
In February 2016 we made a recording of the Futuristic soirée in the A Studio of the Czech Radio in Karlín in Prague and subsequently in the studio called Jamor of Ondřej Ježek.The recording was made by the same performers as at the Art's Birthday 2014 event, and the composition will be performedin this version in October 2016 during the premiére in theinternational EBU exchange network.
Opening Performance Orchestra and guests Pavel Z, Phaerentz, David Danel andTomáš Vtípil
Pavel Z - reader
Phaerentz - reader
David Danel - violin
Tomáš Vtípil - violin
Opening Performance Orchestra–musical concept, 3 intonarumoris
Thanks to: Luciano Chessa, Werner Durand, Milan Guštar, Martin Klimeš, Jan Kolář, Ladin Železný