Lands End
Claudio Sanna, piano
This concert is co-presented with the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco, and with additional travel support by the Francesco Venezze Conservatory of Music in Rovigo
all works by Luciano Chessa
Lands End
Louganis (with video by Terry Berlier)
Wordsworth’s Daffodils
Inkless Imagination III – For Fedele Azari
The imaginary of finis terrae is an archetype found in many cultures. It evokes a poetic triad of liminal spaces, oscillating between the realms of physics and metaphysics, alchemy and anarchy. This is the place where the immanent structure of the world, the physis of the landscape, encounters the vastness of the sea. This encounter evokes something beyond our comprehension. It is the place where the hidden comes to light and where the fixed and stable is transformed into fluid and immense, echoing the alchemist’s goal of uniting opposites – matter and spirit, finite and infinite – into a higher, harmonious whole. And at the edge, the order of things is lost and carried by the melodies of Lands End, revealing a new anarchy.
Praised by legendary pianist Lazar Berman for his “natural musical talent, great virtuosity, distinctive artistic personality, and genuine sense of artistry,” Italian pianist Claudio Sanna has developed an international career distinguished by his commitment to contemporary music, chamber music, and innovative artistic projects. For this concert he performs works from his recent Col Legno recording of solo piano music by Luciano Chessa, well-known to Bay Area audiences. (In fact, Chessa premiered his work Louganis on our series in 2007.)
About the recording ‘Lands End’:
A rugged, windy trail winds through redwood groves and over foreboding cliffs. Occasionally you’ll find small shelters (dens?) made of Pacific madrone branches, so polished they gleam like bones in the sun. But in a climactic moment, the land suddenly ends, and then… only the sea: a vast green horizon full of imponderable possibilities. Along the way you can experience the incandescence of a green rock, reflect on the failures and successes of falling heroes, the evolution of mores, the reality of psychedelic flashbacks, the ’Resistenza’, King Herod’s rage, and finally, how grounding it is to build art structures and then watch them gently collapse. Masterfully interpreted by Claudio Sanna, this album is dedicated to the optimism of the aforementioned walk: its unmistakable energy. A sense of frontier pervades these pages, many of which were created on the Pacific.
Lands End was composed at the Caldwell-Blaney residence in San Francisco and is dedicated to Ugo Rondinone; Wordsworth’s Daffodils was commissioned by New Keys; Inkless Imagination no. III, for Fedele Azari, was written as part of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program.
Claudio Sanna has collaborated with musicians from the Berliner Philharmoniker, Wiener Symphoniker, Teatro alla Scala, and Arena di Verona, performing at prestigious venues including the Vatican Museums, Vienna’s Ehrbar Saal, and numerous international festivals.
A passionate advocate for contemporary music, Sanna has premiered numerous works and maintains close artistic collaborations with composers. Among his most significant performances is the world premiere of Luciano Chessa’s Casinópera at the Casino de Monte-Carlo. His extensive discography includes recordings for Hat Hut Records, Stradivarius, and col legno. His most recent album, Lands End, released by col legno, is entirely dedicated to the piano music of Luciano Chessa.
Sanna graduated in Piano from the Conservatory of Sassari and in Composition from the Conservatory of Brescia, under the guidance of composer Paolo Ugoletti. He pursued advanced studies with Andrea Lucchesini, Pietro De Maria, and Enrico Stellini, as well as chamber music studies with Carlo Fabiano at the prestigious Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome.
Luciano Chessa is an interdisciplinary artist working in the fields of media art, audiovisual performance, music and history. He is known for major installations such as A Heavenly Act and Piombo and frequently collaborates with other esteemed artists and institutions. In particular, Chessa has received numerous awards and has participated in high-profile exhibitions and festivals around the world. His significant contributions to the arts also include scholarly research on 20th-century Italian art, particularly Luigi Russolo and the Futurist movement, underscoring his multifaceted role in both the creative and academic spheres. In 2009, his Orchestra of Futurist Noise Intoners (OFNI) was hailed by Roberta Smith in The New York Times as one of the best art events of the year; Chessa has presented this project throughout the U.S. and internationally at sold-out venues including Rockefeller Center in New York, REDCAT in Los Angeles, New World Center in Miami, Radial System / Maerzmusik-Berliner Festspiele, ArtScience Museum in Singapore, and Lisbon’s Municipal Theater. He has collaborated on this project with Joan La Barbara, Mike Patton, Lee Ranaldo, Ellen Fullman, Blixa Bargeld, Pauline Oliveros, and others. Between September 2023 and October 2024, Chessa was artist in residence at the Direction des Affairs Culturelles in Monaco to create Monaco Mobile, a new installation for artmonte-carlo (July 2024) and Monaco Veloce, a new performance produced by the Théâtre Princesse Grace in collaboration with the Automobile Club de Monaco, the Pavillion Bosio and the Médiathèque de Monaco (September 2024). In Il Corriere della Sera, Francesca Pini praised Monaco Mobile as an “installation that acts as a kind of mantra”, with its “intricate design of vibrating cables and iridescent lights”.
