CONCERT: Echoes, Inscriptions and Fragments – Shelley and Others

Thursday 28 September at 6pm don’t miss Echoes, Inscriptions and Fragments – Shelley and Others, a concert  by visual artist and musician David Ryan, based on texts from the poems of P. B. Shelley, accompanied by Gianni Trovalusci on the flute with vocals by Cristina Grifone. 

Tickets are €15 each and include a glass of prosecco. To purchase your tickets please contact info@keats-shelley-house.org.

Echoes, Inscriptions and Fragments – Shelley and Others           Keats -Shelley Salone 28^th September

Cristina Grifone, soprano/voice

David Ryan, clarinets, zither, percussion

Gianni Trovalusci, flutes

This unique event features a cretive response to fragments from Shelley’s poetic oeuvre by a trio of international musicians whose backgrounds straddle various traditions of classical, improvised and experimental music. Epigrams from the Greek Anthology are also featured and interleaved between these Shelley fragments, the latter culminating in an intense monodrama based on fragments from Prometheus Unbound.  It aims to explore a dialogue between these works and texts from the perspective of the contemporary, using a range of approaches from the atmospheric to lyrical song-like structures and spoken word.

Shelley’s astonishingly subtle and innovative use of language and nature imagery, his exile in Italy, his political and general humanitarian outlook, serve as an inspiration for these musical approaches.  By way of contrast, the ancient epigrams  (of course known to Shelley) give us some insight into the origins of Western poetry – from their beginnings in literal memorials, to profound musings on time, memory and the everyday, resulting in a kind of ‘elemental music’.  The final piece – an extract from Shelley’s Mont Blanc is a commemoration of the late Julian Sands, an actor with longstanding connections with the Keats-Shelley House in Rome.  All of these pieces – conceived by David Ryan - require a concentrated and interactive interplay between the performers in order to create a spontaneous realization within this very special setting of the Salone of the Keats-Shelley house. 

Shelley Fragments 1,2,3 (2023) inc. extracts from Stanzas written near Naples; The Cloud ; A Dirge; Prometheus Unbound

Inscriptions (2002): Epitaph from Athens; Thebes; Night-raven; Plato; Li Ne Venis.

Mont Blanc (2023)

Cristina Grifone 

Cristina Grifone was one of the outstanding graduates of the Conservarory San Pietro a Majella, Naples in 2008.  She had already embarked on a career mainly within early music, going on to perform with leading ensembles including the Nuova Orchestra Alessandro Scarlatti, Musica Fiorita Ensemble and Orchestra, and Antonio Florio’s I Turchini, for many concerts.  In 2016 she moved to Amsterdam, where she currently resides, in order to deepen her study and interpretation of the baroque repertoire, studying at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam under the tutorship of Xenia Meijer.  Since then she has also been involved, in parallel, with contemporary music and performance, including David Ryan’s ‘Opera Aperta’ project.  Previous recordings have featured her singing Handel, Veneziano, Cimarosa, Perti, and Porpora for the Glossa, Pan Classics, and Brilliant Classics labels.   

David Ryan

David Ryan is an improvising musician and visual artist. He has worked with numerous composers including Michael Parsons, Earle Brown, Catherine Lamb, Christian Wolff, Phill Niblock and Christophe Guiraud, and with many musicians including Anton Lukoszevieze, John Edwards, Ian Mitchell, Alberto Popolla, John Tilbury, Luca Venitucci, Gianni Trovalusci amongst others. Ryan has also performed and broadcast for Danish Radio, UNAM Mexico, BBC Radio 3, Resonance FM, Glasgow CCA, Radio Slovenjia, Sky Italia Classica TV, and numerous Festivals, including Sonic Illuminations, British Film Institute, London (2009); and Namusica (2013/14), Naples, Italy. He has participated in the Venice Music Biennale (2015), a collaboration with Italian composer Nicola Sani, and the AngelicA Festival, Bologna (2016).  Screenings of his video works have taken place at Konzerthaus, Berlin; Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatoire; Issue Project Space, New York; Darmstadt Ferienkurse for Neue Musik, and Qo2 in Brussels, Belgium.  He has collaborated with various ensembles including the London Improvisers Orchestra, Apartment House and Konzert Minimal, Berlin. Recent compositions, with the group Opera Aperta, include; Recitativo– Fragments after Lucretius and Negri (2015-18), Aphorisms 1, (2019) Aphorisms 2 : The Modern Monologue (2020). Inscriptions (2022) was performed as part of the I-ME (Chamber Music Theatre Slovenja) at the City Museum, Slovenja and Schrattenbach Opera Festival in the Czech Republic in December 2022.  In 2016 he was an Abbey Fellow at the British School at Rome, and in 2020 was a judge for the Franco Evangelisti prize in composition, Rome. He is currently Associate professor in Fine Art at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge.

Gianni Trovalusci

Gianni Trovalusci is a flautist dedicated to contemporary music performance. He has worked in both acoustic and electronic sound environments with numerous flutes;  and with a vast number of artists, including Roscoe Mitchell, Hamid Drake, Ken Vandemark, Luigi Ceccarelli, Michele Rabbia, Peppe Servillo, Sonia Bergamasco, Lisa Ferlazzo Natoli, Fabrizio Ottaviucci, Elio Martusciello, Antonio Caggiano, Rodolfo Rossi, Evan Parker, John Tilbury, David Ryan, Virgilio Sieni, Roberto Bellatalla, Giancarlo Schiaffini, Silvia Schiavoni, Elio Pecora and Paolo Volponi. He has performed a large number of works by contemporary authors including Giorgio Battistelli, Hubert Howe, Michelangelo Lupone, Giorgio Nottoli, Walter Prati, Nicola Sani and Lidia Zielenska, with a special focus on aleatoric works by Franco Evangelisti, Sylvano Bussotti, Luigi Nono, Bruno Maderna, Alvin Curran, Domenico Guaccero, Marcello Panni, Alvin Curran, Roscoe Mitchell, Demetrio Stratos, John Cage, Earle Brown and Christian Wolff. He has performed as a soloist with such important conductors as Ilan Volkov, Marcello Panni, Luca Pfaff and Steed Cowart. He has recorded for, among others, Auditorium Edizioni, Rai Radio 3, Radio Vaticana, Radio Svizzera Italiana, BBC 3, Swedish National Radio and West Deutscher Rundfunk.

The musicians would like to thank Casa Scelsi for their support.