Bussotti dies on the eve of the 90Bussotti, the party becomes a tribute to the great composer

Sylvano Bussotti

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September 19, 2021 Sylvano Bussotti dies on the eve of the inauguration of '90Bussotti', the five days that the city of Florence was preparing to celebrate the artist composer on the occasion of his 90th birthday. 

Born in Florence on October 1, 1931, Bussotti died in Milan, in the institute where he had been hospitalized for two months due to a long illness. His 90th birthday would have been celebrated on October 1st, but the event in his honor will be held anyway. The tribute from 20 to 25 September 2021, as part of the Florentine Summer. The news was given by spouse Rocco Quaglia, niece Michela and their respective families. 

Listens and visions on Sylvano Bussotti, five days dedicated to his immense and multifaceted musical production, designed to symbolically celebrate the figure of the artist and man. Now the party becomes a commemoration.

The project curated by Fabbrica Europa, Stensen Cultural Foundation, Florence Queer Festival, Tempo Reale, Maschietto Editore, city institutions deeply connected to him, in collaboration with Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Bussotti Opera Ballet and Marino Marini Museum, with the contribution of the Municipality of Florence - Estate Fiorentina 2021 and with the coordination of Culter, will therefore involve his workmates, friends and fans, united to celebrate and pay homage to him. 

Composer, man of the theater, painter, set designer and costume designer, Sylvano Bussotti embodies an artistic totality of undisputed talent. In his works, with unscrupulousness and freedom, the arts intersect, the signs overlap in different and original forms, in the name of a vision in which queer provocation and formal rigor blend perfectly.

90 Bussotti will address in particular three aspects of Bussotti's multiple activities: film and sound production, choreographic occasions and the historical and artistic context in which the Florentine composer was active.

The program of the exhibition from 20 to 25 September in Florence

Monday 20 September

the "90 Bussotti" review will begin at the Parc Performing Arts Research Center (7 pm), as part of the Fabbrica Europa festival, with the lecture by Luca Scarlini "The thousand faces of desire: Phaedra's ghosts in Bussotti's work". Phaedra is the central figure of Bussotti's work, starting from the suggestion of the tragedy of Jean Racine, addressed in the very musical translation by Giuseppe Ungaretti, with numerous works for theater, dance, music.

In 1980 "Le Racine" was staged at the Piccola Scala, of which Silvia Lelli and Roberto Masotti recounted the construction of this work with an unpublished photographic documentation, which sets Racin's drama in a café made of mirrors and secrets, in which plays the tragedy under the complicit gaze, yet detached from the local pianist.

On Wednesday 22 September

, at the Stensen Cultural Foundation (9 pm), an evening of screenings and performances will be held by Tempo Reale within the Tempo Reale Festival. In the light of that idea of ​​a total work of art that Sylvano Bussotti embodies throughout his career, cinema plays a leading role. Together with the absolute avant-garde experiment that was "Rara Film" (1965 - 69), the feature film "Apology" constitutes one of the most significant pieces. Made in Berlin in 1972, with the music of Sylvano Bussotti, it is a real rarity, for a long time awaiting a significant process of sonification.

A heterogeneous quintet of performers undertakes this undertaking - Monica Benvenuti, voice, Luca Paoloni, violin, Umi Carroy, piano, Jonathan Faralli, percussion and Francesco Giomi, electronics - now widely used to the comparison with Bussotti's music and dedicatees, on several occasions, of his original works. The program opens with the "5 Videogiornali della sestina musica 91", amusing video clips made in 1991 for the Music Section of the Venice Biennale, in which Bussotti interacts with some emblematic characters of the Italian pop culture of the time: Maurizio Costanzo, Alvaro Restrepo, Patty Pravo, Moira Orfei and Moana Pozzi.

On

Thursday 23 September

then, for the Florence Queer Festival (La Compagnia cinema theater, 6 pm), the screening of the film "Bussotti par lui même" (1975), a feature film of rare vision, made by Carlo Piccardi for Italian Swiss Television, in close collaboration with the composer. In addition to presenting a rich anthology of the music he created until then, the film is a document and a poetic manifesto that highlights the close intertwining between sound and theatrical gesture, always present in Bussott's work. With Elise Ross, Giancarlo Cardini, Italo Gomez, Romano Amidei and Rocco Quaglia, who will be present in the room and will give a brief introduction to the film with Luca Scarlini and Bruno Casini.

Saturday 25th September

the celebrations will close with a double appointment. At the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, in the afternoon (5.30 pm), there will be the presentation of the book by Renzo Cresti "Sylvano Bussotti and the brilliant work", recently released for the types of Maschietto Editore. The volume tells about Florentine childhood of Bussotti, his relationship with his uncle and brother, both painters, thanks to whom he began to be the artist he has become; tells of his meeting with Alberto Arbasino, Aldo Braibanti, John Cage, Carmelo Bene, Umberto Eco and Pier Paolo Pasolini; collects one of his unpublished works and a selection of his scores, real works of art in which traditional notation alternates with a pictographic experience; contains an interview with Rocco Quaglia, choreographer, dancer,collaborator and companion of Bussotti from the seventies and a cd with pieces by Bussotti interpreted by Monica Benvenuti and Francesco Giomi.

The journalist Gabriele Rizza will talk about it with the author, Rocco Quaglia and the maestro Vincenzo Saldarelli, who at the end will perform "Ultima rara (pop song)". For the occasion, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino will exhibit sketches and sketches made by Bussotti and kept in his archive. Finally, in the evening, at the Marino Marini Museum (8.15 pm) there will be "Ermafrodito", a concert-choreography narrated by Luca Scarlini with the music of Sylvano Bussotti ("Hermaphrodite Great Mythological Fantasy for Guitar", 1997).

"Hermaphrodite" is a writing for guitar and dance around a central figure in the imagination of Sylvano Bussotti, singer of a queer world of desires, epiphanies and ghosts. Alberto Mesirca, one of the greatest guitarists of today, will compare himself with the dance of Luisa Cortesi in the composition of an original work on the darkness of the body and its rituals. To give rhythm to the composition, cues from literary works, poems and diaries, only partially published in the book "My theaters", with a preface by Umberto Eco.