Happy birthday, Vortex!

If you happen to be in Geneva, don’t forget to check out the birthday celebration of Ensemble Vortex, one of my favourite contemporary music bands in the world. I’ll be there in spirit with a little celebrative thing for 17-channel electronics called “joyful psychedelic vorticose stomp”.

(This should have been posted last week, but renewing the domain indirectly caused my site to go down for a few days. On the 15th, I also wanted to post something I wrote roughly two years ago about a song by the Cranberries, but perhaps I should wait another year. On the other hand, I promise I’m going to fix the broken links to my music, add a few recent pieces and papers and do some other much-needed housekeeping.)

In Livorno and more

First things first: I’ll be in Livorno tomorrow (that is, October 23), for a concert involving my acousmatic work “Musica per il chiostro di Royaumont”, which will be played in the beautiful auditorium of Istituto Mascagni at 6 pm, in the “Suoni Inauditi” festival. I’ll give an introductory talk at 3.30 pm (I think) at the Istituto. If anyone in the area is interested, please show up!

This being said, I realise I’ve not really understood what to do with this webpage yet, despite being quite proud of having one. There have been nice things around, such as some of my pieces being played around the world (Giacomo Baldelli has been touring the US with “Three Electric Creatures”, Proxima Centauri will perform “Gli atomi che s’accendevano e radiavano” a few times in China, and I feel like there is something else I’m forgetting, so I apologise for any omissions here), and I guess spreading the word about them is what a site like this is supposed to be for… I definitely have to figure out how to put this medium to good use. More coming soon, hopefully.

For Rei as a doe

I will perform the piano part of Michael Edwards’s beautiful, 40-minute contemplative tour de force For Rei as a doe at Superbudda, in Turin, on May 30, with Michael himself running the electronics. I guess I’m going to be both excited and terrified, since I love playing so much but I’m not, and I’ve never been, a real pianist. If you come (and I hope you will), please don’t be too hard on me…

A composition masterclass

I’ll deliver a composition masterclass in San Marino from July 12 to 18—with electronics, without electronics, all is possible in principle. The great news is that wonderful Ensemble l’Imaginaire will be there too, and we’re going to work together throughout the whole week. As far as I know, there are some places left: the deadline for applications is June 15. For more info, have a look at https://www.sanmarinoartist.com/teachers/andrea-agostini/ or feel free to write me for any question—and, if you like the idea, spread the news!

Good morning

Big news coming: it’s 2019, I’m 44 and I just started my website. This is my second attempt, actually: the first one failed miserably a few years ago when, after months of neglect, I forgot to pay for the domain name. Some other time I’ll find another no worse, I said to myself like Archilochus before me, and indeed this new one has no dash in it, which is an improvement.

Now the plan is publishing soon other, less self-referential information, and possibly, who knows, using it as the outlet for some things I’ve been thinking about often—you know, contemporary music, pop music, music theory, music technology… I’ll concede it sounds unlikely, but let’s see!