reConvert

(ex)tension: for 2 percussion players with 48 solenoid motors

"Our idea starts from the necessity to investigate space, to explore its features, finding the potential in acoustic properties and using them as a starting point for our research. We are interested how is it possible to create a three-dimensional and analogue sound system? How are we able to work with instruments that can move sound in space? Taking advantage of the use of customised industrial items, we will have the possibility to create three-dimensional audio images controlled and designed in real time by the performers. The concept that interests us is the single percussive impulse as a music creator. We can change surface, speed of execution but the impulse is at the core of every percussive action."

Swiss duo reConvert (Lorenzo Colombo and Roberto Maqueda) was emerged as a natural extension of the percussion repertoire of the last 70 years to become a seal of identity that rejects generic definitions and bets on a continuous work between different artists in which the questioning of the dogmas of the academy is in the foreground. With difficulties in defining the facet of the percussionist of our time, due to the evolution that the "instrument" has undergone in itself, reConvert raises an aesthetic question without complexes, and that does not feed on the natural limits and definitions of terms. Halfway between percussion and electronics, the new projects that reConvert faces could well be named with different adjectives, without any of them being able to define them completely and fully.

Lorenzo Colombo is a percussionist dedicated to researching and promoting new music. He is collaborating with contemporary music groups such as Divertimento Ensemble, MDI Ensemble, Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen or Sentieri Selvaggi. Colombo works with several chamber music groups trying to explore different languages, including electronics, video and/or installations. Heterodox percussionist Roberto Maqueda is interested in avant-garde art, new forms of communication as well as their implementation in the sound-musical creation of our time. He studied with Christian Dierstein, Fred Frith or Håkon Stene, currently he lives in between Basel and Copenhagen. Maqueda has been part of the program "Young Artists Promises" of the ULYSSES Platform.

Production: KUD Mreža
Support: City of Ljubljana, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia