Echoes of Lamentation: A Vocal Exploration

Soprano Niki Lada and electronic music specialist Alessandro Fiordelmondo present a programme of works for voice and electronics that explore emotive vocal expressions, evoking a sense of introspection and emotional depth and creating bridges with the world of sorrow and lament. In Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino's Due arie marine, extracted from the opera Perseo e Andromeda, traditional instruments are replaced entirely by electronic sounds, creating surreal landscapes that accompany the voice. Their vocal style is stylised and focuses on abstract lyricism, with minimal variation in melody and attention to text intelligibility. The piece Lamento by French composer Franck Bedrossian relies more on the expressive capabilities of the voice itself, augmented by electronic processing. Ethereal voices, whispers, and extended vocal techniques are manipulated in real time to blur the line between acoustic and digital sound. The composition explores a spectrum of emotions from introspection to anguish, through a dynamic interaction between vocal performance and electronic augmentation.

Programme

Salvatore Sciarrino (b. 1947)
Due arie marine (Two Marine Arias, 1990)
for mezzo-soprano and real-time synthesised sounds
Text: Salvatore Sciarrino after Jules Laforgue
1. Lamento (Lament)
2. Tempesta (Canzone marinara) (Storm [Marine Song])

Franck Bedrossian (b. 1971)
Lamento (Lament, 2007)
for female voice and electronic device

Brief biographical notes

Niki Lada

Studied classical voice and opera at the Municipal and State Conservatory of Thessaloniki and the Conservatory of Music of Perugia, and specialised in 20th- and 21st-century repertoire at the Conservatory of Ravenna and the International Divertimento Ensemble Academy in Milan. As a soloist, she performs mainly 20th- and 21st-century repertoire. She has collaborated with artists such as Divertimento Ensemble, Suono Giallo Ensemble, Opificio Sonoro, Franck Bedrossian, Nicolas Tzortzis, Alessandro Fiordelmondo and has appeared in festivals and theatres such as Imola International Music Festival, DAMSLab, Teatro Alighieri, Ravenna, Fabbrica del Vapore, Milan, Teatro Litta, Milan, Rondò in Monferrato, Delian Academy, Festival dei Due Mondi, Spoleto. She has also taken part in performances at festivals such as the Biennale of Thessaloniki and has created sound performances together with the sound and video artist Alessia Damiani that have been presented at festivals around the world.

Alessandro Fiordelmondo

Composer, performer and researcher in the field of media art and computer music. He studied at the Conservatory of Padua where he received his master's degree with honours in electronic music composition. Since 2019, he has been a research assistant at the Centro di Sonologia Computazionale (CSC), the computer music laboratory of the University of Padua, and Audio Innova, a spinoff of the same university, and has been working on audio and video performances, production, reactivation of multimedia installations, as well as multimedia software development. He is a PhD student at the Department of Humanities and Cultural Heritage Studies (DIUM), University of Udine. His main research topic is the reactivation and preservation of new art forms. He is currently a visiting researcher at the Computational Media and Arts (CMA) thrust of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Guangzhou, China.

In collaboration with CSC Centro di Sonologia Computazionale

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