lamberto coccioli. » narrator

The Dancing Pig

lamberto coccioli — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Shortly after arriving in Birmingham I was involved in the realisation of The Dancing Pig, in collaboration with Mark Lockett, a wonderfully polymorphous musician, and Roy Kwabena, then Birmingham’s poet laureate, and a brilliant story-teller originally from Trinidad.

The Dancing Pig is an Indonesian story about two curious children and a witch. I worked on a live electronics setup to transform Roy’s narrating voice and some of the gamelan instruments, to give the story and the music an eerie, outworldly quality.

The Divine Claudius

lamberto coccioli — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 21:47:00 +0000

Scored for narrator and an ensemble of four instruments (flute, clarinet, guitar, cello), The Divine Claudius employs the beautiful, powerful English translation of the homonimous poem by Zbigniew Herbert, one of the greatest Polish poets of the last century. As it is the case with other ‘melologues’, this work has been written for Paola Roman and the Toujours Ensemble at the request of Nicola Campogrande.

Il racconto delle nuvole

lamberto coccioli — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 18:51:00 +0000

Excerpt: Nuvole chiare

Il racconto delle nuvole was written for Nicola Campogrande and the Toujours Ensemble. The original version featured a narrator, and included three artistic layers – the narrated text by the writer and painter Marco Vacchetti, the music, and a series of seven paintings by Vacchetti himself relating to the texts, to be shown in turn during the various sections of the performance.

Subsequently I found the music to work very well on its own as a suite of seven instrumental scenes, and as such it is presented here.

flute (doubling alto flute)
clarinet (doubling bass clarinet)
guitar
cello

* * *

1. Nuvole scure
2. Seleuca
3. Atamante
4. Pedro & Cristoforo
5. Segnali di fumo
6. Eolo
7. Nuvole chiare

Cinque Amori

lamberto coccioli — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 23:37:00 +0000

My friend Nicola Campogrande, a talented composer, writer and music organiser based in Turin invited me to write this ‘melologue’ – a narrated text accompanied by music – for Paola Roman and the Toujours Ensemble. The required theme for the work was “L’amore dei vecchi” – love in old age. I have put together a collection of five very different texts, to show five contrasting facets of love.

narrator
flute [doubling alto flute and bass flute in C]
clarinet [doubling bass clarinet and Eb clarinet]
guitar
cello

on texts by Thomas Moore, Russian folklore, Simone de Beauvoir, Aristophanes, Maynard d’Aubigné.