Listening to Giovanni Sollima, you understand that music, when it passes through his hands, is always something different from what you have known until now. This is because he is an internationally renowned cellist and composer who has been able to blend, in a particular identity, a classical education of the highest level and a curiosity that has pushed him to explore frontiers that are nothing short of unconventional.
Sollima's eclecticism, his ability to grasp vital ideas in the life that surrounds him, the curiosity that pushes him to confront the most varied languages of art are the lifeblood of an artistic path devoted to experimentation and also at the center of the project conceived for Futuro Presente. A performance dedicated to cinema and the visual arts that sees the musician and composer from Palermo immerse himself and weave a dialogue between music and images. "Small journeys", as he likes to call them, of sight and hearing traveled by taking up the cello, as if it were a boat, and playing with sound waves and visual sources.
The concert, with a program of Interludes and Round Concerts, sees Sollima also try his hand at improvisation – in a game of recording, assembly and recomposition – thanks to the use of the D-Touch.
Created by Enrico Costanza and Simon Shelley, the Audio D-Touch is an instrument that, despite looking like a simple toy made up of colored wooden cubes, incorporates three types of electronic interface that allow you to manage and play with piano sounds and other instruments, sound sources and percussive sequences to give shape and life to complex and ever-new compositions.
Having graduated in Cello with Giovanni Perriera and in Composition with his father Eliodoro Sollima, perfecting himself at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart with Antonio Janigro and Milko Kelemen, the Sicilian musician has collaborated since he was young with musicians of the caliber of Giuseppe Sinopoli, Bruno Canino, Jorg Demus and Martha Argerich. Alongside this solo activity, Sollima continually explores new directions, finding inspiration not only in the contamination of different musical genres but also in the comparison with other creative languages.
Rock, jazz, electronics, Anglo-Saxon minimalism as well as the ethnic music of Sicily and the entire Mediterranean area blend together in the unique and unmistakable style of a musician who often uses Western and Eastern acoustic instruments, electric and electronic instruments, and others of his own invention. The inspiration, then, comes from and is linked to the wider world of human creativity, be it literature or cinema, theater or epic. In 2004 he composed and performed with his band Songs from The Divine Comedy, based on Dante's canticles. He subsequently collaborated with Bob Wilson, Peter Stein and Baricco, as regards the theatre, and combined his music with the images of films such as I cento passi and La meglio gioventù by Marco Tullio Giordana, Le valige di Tulse Luper and Nightwatching by Peter Greenaway, Il Bell’Antonio by Maurizio Zaccaro and, more recently, Palermo Shooting by Wim Wenders.
