Matteo Franceschini - Songbook

There are inconceivable combinations of instruments that short-circuit traditionally diverse spheres, as in Songbook, which combines a rock quartet, an amplified classical ensemble and live electronics, a project composed by its author-performer Matteo Franceschini, winner of the Silver Lion award, bringing together performers from the Icarus Ensemble and the Cantus Ensemble of Zagreb.

“In Songbook I bring together a rock quartet and a contemporary music ensemble, playing on the boundaries of language, reflecting upon the relationship between the two ‘groups’, upon their limits, their mutual influences. One of the primary objectives of this project is to combine the complexity, depth and richness of contemporary composition (the ‘written’ page) with the ‘unlimited’ energy, visionary impact and constant search for new sounds typical of an electro-rock live set. The project will appear as the live performance for a hypothetical concept-album, the creation of which will allow me to develop my personal considerations on the ‘historic’ model of the song form, with the purpose of discovering its deepest structures by exploring some of its gestural and perceptive archetypes. The composition never complacently shows off the ‘highbrow’ material, nor will it hybridise the registers. It will attempt to make them coexist, through a dynamic principle of observation and distortion, aimed at exploring new sound horizons (...)”. (Matteo Franceschini)