ANTS RECORDS

Luca Miti, pianoforte

What we are here presenting is one of the most intimate

releases we produced ever. Luca Miti is a “strange” kind of

composer and musician. And organizer, too. He has the

uncommon attitude to make private experiences and let them

become “public” in a very natural way. Primarily known for his

compositions (most of them unconventional and ”

experimental” in the best sense) and impro-live-written

collaborations, he’s also a “perfomer” with many different

sides. One of these aspetcs is shown in this album. This is

really an “album” in the broader sense. It contains pieces

that are “images of life” for Luca. They are parts of his own

musical essence. The daily activities, the loving moments, the

earliest listening, the deep influences, all of this is comprised

in this “lovely” compilation. The Piano is the “classic”

instrument of Luca. He’s not the incredibly skilled performer,

but he’s, to me, the "real" performer. And, most important,

he really “understand” (‘cause he loves it) the music he plays.

This CD is not only a collection of beautiful pieces by more or

less known contemporary composers. It’s, first of all, a gift

that Luca makes to himself and to us, trying to communicate

his own experience.

You’ll have the chance to discover some little gems in it. And

you’ll have the opportunity to listen to them in the most

“honest” way you can do.

“Luca Miti, who is already present in the 'ants' series both as

a composer and as a performer, in this new CD has chosen to

present himself exclusively in the role of the pianist, taken in

the traditional meaning of the word. And a good pianist he is

indeed, and it is to be regretted that he seems rather

reluctant to show his skills to live audiences. The pieces he

selected for this release may be ascribed to minimal music,

with all the controversial aspects the terms implies. As by

now some decades have passed since the period of the

greatest splendor of this musical movement perhaps one may

speak, in the case of the recent pieces, of neo-minimalism.

Not being really an expert of the field I would propose the

following, simple, distinction: one type of minimal music,

which in its austerity is closer to minimalism in the visual arts,

takes the term rather literally, in other words, few sound

events are happening, the sound-to-silence ratio shows a

clear preponderance of the latter. Cage has pushed this line

to an extreme in his organ piece for Halberstadt: one sound

event per year. Among the pieces on the CD Michi's

Passatempi e giochi d'attenzione n.1 appears to be the one

most clearly rooted in this area. Michi's work furthermore

transcends, according to the intention of the composer, the

conventional 'piece' format, its duration, for instance, was

determined by the chosen total length of the CD. Long

decays by Tom Johnson - one of the grand (not yet old) men

of minimalism - focuses on the fading away of sounds, and

gives ample space to silences that are determined by the

lenght of text fragments the performer has to read for

himself, inaudible to the listener. The CD shows that also

Kurtag, who hardly can be counted among the minimalists,

has written a piece in a somehow minimal style. In the other

type the term 'minimal' rather means that the material used is

very restricted and undergoes limited variations, but there

are nevertheless, sometimes at least, lots of sounds. This

applies, for instance, to the 'classic' minimal work on the

record, Riley's Keyboard Study n.2, where Miti does a

remarkable job as performer.

Knowing Miti's compositional style one would suspect that he

is more inclined to the first brand, but as a pianist he appears

to be quite at ease with both of them, and the selection

actually shows a far greater number of pieces belonging to

the second brand. A characteristic which seems to

distinguish the 'old' and (at least many) of the 'new' minimalists

is the fact that the pieces of the latter are rather short,

sometimes very short (specially when compared to the

'oldies') and the touch of intimacy that pervades many of

them.The sometimes heavy assertiveness which for years has

delighted the fans of Glass, Riley & Co. (La Monte Young was a

conspicuous exception) seems to have given way to yet

another (possible) interpretation of minimalism: brief

"Moments musicaux" with some tendency towards the joli, or

"Albumblätter" with the presence of (or should we say the

return to) extramusical references. This is enhanced in the

pieces by Curran and Chauveau which are placed in an

ambient atmosphere. In Delor's Journal we find an attempt to

link the compositional process to the composer's life time:

the modules of the pieces were composed one per day over a

certain period. In Piva's pieces the extramusical reference is

the architectural structure of the church "San Paolo alle Tre

Fontane". The remaining pieces (Guidi, Masin - who also wrote

their pieces for Luca - and Burnell) appear to share quite a

similar atmosphere as the ones mentioned above, even

Spiegel's Cyclic Score nr. 2, in spite of the fact that

chronologically speaking it belongs to the previous generation

of minimalism.” (Albert Mayr)

track list

1) GYORGY KURTAG 12 Microludi, n° 8 0'49"

2) TERRY RILEY Keyboard Study #II 20'33"

3) TOM JOHNSON Long Decays 3'39"

4) LAURIE SPIEGEL Two Cyclic Scores, #1 4'04"

5) ALVIN CURRAN A Room In Rome 5'11"

6) GILBERT DELOR Journal du 1/1 au … 3'21"

7) ENRICO PIVA Parlando di S. Paolo alle Tre Fontane versione

1 1'59"

8) ANNA GUIDI “era tanto tempo che non mi succedeva”

2'26"

9) GIGI MASIN Tootle 1'53"

10) ENRICO PIVA Parlando di S. Paolo alle Tre Fontane

versione 2 3'37"

11) SYLVAIN CHAUVEAU Radiophonie n° 2 5'13"

12) PAUL BURNELL Just Before Dawn 1'09"

13) FRANCESCO MICHI Passatempi e giochi d'attenzione n° 3

per pianoforte 9'05"

released 03/12/2005