The three pieces for saxophone “Bau” were born from the meeting and collaboration with French saxophonist Joël Versavaud.
Bau 1 for soprano sax, is organized around circular breathing, as the primary entity of energy / sound.
Bau 2 (« La costruzione di un sentimento amoroso ») for tenor sax, is built on a breath, growing and eventually degenerating into passion.
Bau 3 (« Elogio di un’ombra ») for baritone sax, explores the different techniques of the instrument, and presents an evolutionary form of the sound elements developed in the first two pieces.
In all the pieces a writing of projection and the treatment of sound accompany the instrumental work.
The title is an homage to László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946), artist and teacher at the Bauhaus in the 1920/30s; in German language, “Der Bau” means, in its architectural sense, the last phase of a creation / construction process.
Research on Moholy-Nagy’s luminous compositions and «frames» and sound research around an instrument like the saxophone, with a plastic and malleable sound, with timbres and extended sonic possibilities, influenced the composition of the three pieces proposed in this recording.
Sound, like light in Moholy-Nagy’s research, here becomes a material to be sculpted, to be projected into sound space, so as to create movement and contrast of “dark light” in the different nuances of intensity like a game “of shadow and light”.
