Music from the Invisibile Cities
Freely inspired from Italo Calvino’s “Invisibile Cities”
Claudio Angeleri Orchestra Tascabile guest Franco Ambrosetti
Claudio Angeleri, piano, composition; Franco Ambrosetti, trumpet; Silli Togni actress; Paola Milzani, voice; Oreste Castagna, actor; Giulio Visibelli, flutei, soprano sax; Gabriele Comeglio, sax alto, flute in sol; Marco Esposito, electric bass; Stefano Bagnoli, drums
Claudio Angeleri’s original music;
direction by Oreste Castagna;
Research and text reduction by Mario Bertasa
Original production for Notti di Luce 2004

Music from the Invisible Cities is an original project of music, words and light ideated by the pianist and composer Claudio Angeleri and inspired to Italo Calvino’s well-known “Le Città Invisibili” (Invisible Cities).
It’s a fantasy voyage to some of the cities described by Marco Polo to the Gran Khan in Calvino’s book. It tells about imaginary places outside time that recall ancient cities or very modern metropolis. Some of them are suspended on long stilts, other ones are on the border between two sand and sea deserts, other ones are perfectly the same even if a thousand kilometers far away from each other.
In order to turn this kaleidoscope of images and sensations into a show, we’ve worked either on the specifity of the different languages (music, word, images) and on the new possibilities offered by interdisciplinary relations.
It’s music, for example, that tells the story, therefore assuming the specific descriptive function of the text, while words, performed or played (and often also electronically filtered), are often used especially for their potential musical quality instead of their lexical coherence.
The show, according to the logic of Calvino’s book, doesn’t want to have a real guiding principle, but wants to offer the public a sequence of paintings, different from one another, each one with its own story and characters.
The sounds consequently draw a molteplicity of auditory prints, through words that are read and sung and through different instruments, like shining trails indicating the listener individual ways of seeing, so that he/she can enjoy them in their full potentiality making them anytime “individual” in their interpretation, since “not always signs, as we catch them, tell us what we believe they want to say”.

Claudio Angeleri, for long taking part in the world of jazz and of interdisciplinary experimentation as a pianist and composer, has held concerts in Europe and in the Usa playing and recording with Charlie Mariano, Bob Mintzer, Franco Ambrosetti, Gianluigi Trovesi.
He has been rewarded several times by the specialized press and, in 1997, got the third prize of the Munich Conservatory.

Franco Ambrosetti, is unanimously and absolutely considered one of the best trumpet specialists.
Acnknowleged and appreciated even by Miles Davis for his solistic qualities, he has played with Phil Woods, Dexter Gordon, Cannonball Adderley, Joe Henderson, Michael Brecker, John Scofield.

Music from the Invisible Cities

Bauci, is an ethereal suspended city. Its inhabitants live on palafittes they never go down from because they respect and love so much the earth to avoid any contact. But there is another hypothesis. Maybe its inhabitants stay there because they actually hate the planet earth, they preferred as it was before and so decide to look at it from above by means of binoculars, completely absent.
Cloe, is the prototype of the modern metropolis. Everything happens quickly. No-one knows each other. People only glance swiftly while going up a sliding scale or crossing an expression out of a moving train.
Smeraldina, in Calvino’s imaginary world, surely represents Venice. A double city where roads and waterways cross together and are superimposed. The voice performs earth stories intersecting with the sung voice that tells about water and air.
La città sottile (instrumental). The thin cities represent a category of city in Calvino’s book. Suspended cities facing gravity with bridges, touching the sky with their steeples and very thin antennas, floating on water in a constant wave-like motion.
Despina ( for declamatory and instrumental voices). Despina is a sea- and earth – city on the border between tha sand- and the sea- desert. It’s not a “western” cuty, but a harbour of an exotic land with spiced flavours and perfumes.
La città continua, sets out a very actual subject: the omologation of urban spaces and rhythms. Sometimes, indeed, cities that are even very far away from each other are almost identical: the same houses, the same harbour, the same hotels. Also the persons seem to be the same. Often places are the center and the outskirts of themselves without solution of continuity.
La città perfetta, tells about a city built following in detail the indications of architects, philosophers, astronomers. Everything is perfect, even its inhabitants. They are so perfect that their race has been kept preserved for many generations until when...
Eutropia, In this city everything constantly changes: places, jobs, people. But the anxiety of living new different emotions is so sudden that in the end everything stays just the same.
La città possibile, Somewhere the city we have always dreamt of probably exists. A city that summarizes possibility and desires, dreams and reality. There’s no pre-fixed route, it’s necessary to search within ourselves to find it.