Laura Agnusdei :: Ondarock's interviews

Two months after the exit of the valuable “Flowers Are Blooming in Antarctica” we intercept Laura Agnusdei to find out more about the contents of the album and on the different stages of its artistic evolution.

Let's start from the end, or from “Flowers Are Blooming in Antarctic”, an album that reappears the fruits of your constant search for hybridization of languages, leading it to a range of solutions that are never so large. How did you come to such a result? How much importance are the many usual collaborations in the undergrowth of experimentation?
The disc is a work that lasted two years, even more perhaps. It is a very choral record, which lives on an intense exchange with many musicians. First of all Giacomo Bertocchi (high sax, flute, clarinet) Edoardo Grisogani (percussion, Drum Pad) and Giulio Scarmieri (Farfisa, Synths, production assistant) with which I engraved 4 out of 8 songs in a direct line of quartet where before entering the studio there was a great team work that saw them participate in various ways also in the compositional process. Another half of the disc instead had a less live genesis, more from production in the studio, and also sees Ramon Moro on the trumpet appears, Giovanni Minguzzi on drums and Teguh remains at Tarawangsa. Certainly inside there is much more than the aforementioned people, there are years of exchanges and experiences with many other people who have contributed to my artistic growth.

You have a graduate in classic sax from the Conservatory and you have achieved a master's degree in electronic music. How much and how did your training affect composer and musician activity?
At the Bologna Conservatory, under the guidance of Maestro Daniele Faziani, I learned to play my tool. I did it with the rigor of classical music, and this helped me on the technical side, but in its way also from an expressive point of view I must say. Studying the Institute of Sonology, on the other hand, allowed me to develop a personal aesthetic of mine within the electroacoustic music, I learned many things, which certainly return to my practice, but which nevertheless do not define it rigidly.

The approach to your tool is nothing short of unconventional. The saxophone becomes a sort of improper musical weapon that escapes gender cataloging to become a malleable source of sound. Where does this attitude originate from?
In my opinion my salvation was that despite academic studies, I have played in various projects independent since I am 16 years old. That approach to free exploration, dictated by his own pleasure, strictly personal, of discovery and experimentation, but also by a communicative and sharing necessity, he never abandoned me. Starting from this assumption I do not pose the problem of what genre I am playing and my sax is free to cross different contexts without asking too many questions.

Returning to the sphere to which your make music is attributable, the experimental scene, how difficult is it to find spaces to perform in front of a truly interested audience?
There are not many spaces, but they are doubly precious because they are often created by people moved only by a genuine love for unconventional languages ​​(there is no great money to be divided and this attracts only the most courageous and determined souls). The public therefore can be restricted but it is often really interested, the experimental scene is an ecosystem, we are interdependent and being part of it is primarily a political and identity act, a choice. Of course it would be nice if there were more economic resources, but do we live in the Meloni era, that we expect? They cut the money for the figured health that is of art …

I believe that one of the strengths of your sound practice is to be engaging regardless of the complexity and wealth of references. Is this the result of a specific will or is it the natural consequence of your way of understanding music?
I would absolutely say the second. When I start thinking about a new album or the like I try to focus only on the music I am imagining, the music that I first want to hear, leaving out the idea of ​​how it will be perceived, if it is something accessible or engaging, this is to others to say, you do not have power on the ears of others!

Your disk focuses on ecological issues and talks about environmental safeguard. Do you think that art today can still affect its users in socio-political terms? Can music sensitize and bring certain topics to the center of the cultural debate?
Art summarizes, this is its great power. Imagine coagulation, speeches, emotions of the eras of which she is daughter. Art is political even when it does not seem, because in any case every work brings with it an idea of ​​the world, even without explicit it in posters and declarations. Our era is no different from the others, it has only its specific languages, different postures from the past, different mediums. So we must not fall into the error of thinking that since we are no longer in the glorious 1970s, art does not move anything in socio-political terms. It does it only differently, for better or for worse.

“Flowers Are Blooming in Antarctica” is a direct descendant – thematic and musical – of your solo debut “Laurisilva”. Will there be space for further future development? Is there anything you would still like to add to the route traced?
To date I have only vague ideas on what the next step may be, certainly in the practical act I am convinced of the choice to get out of the size of the alone, it stimulates me more at this moment the idea of ​​making another disc that sees the involvement of others* Musicist* than returning to a more solitary approach.

How much and how did Maple Death contributed to the realization of the disc?
Fabia is the first exit of the Opale series, a Maple Death and Canicola Edizioni project that combines music and illustration, every opal exit sees the parallel production of an LP and an illustrated book, linked together by a red thread that crosses atmospheres, emotional temperatures, content views, and collected in a precious limited edition box that includes unique posters and design. The visual counterpart of my album is created by the illustrator Daniele Castellano, an incredible artist with whom I chose to collaborate by virtue of his unique style that partly reminds me of another artist that I love very much, Luigi Serafini. Jonathan Clancy, the load -bearing column of Maple Death Records, has strongly believed in this album since the first listening and is doing an incredible record work, I love him and I feel very lucky to have it by my side.

How will “Flowers Are Blooming in Antarctica” be transposed live?
He is played in the trio with Edoardo Grisogani with percussion and Jacopo Buda on the trumpet, I play the tenor sax and all 3 we also get juggled in synths and electronics to return the complexity of instrumentation of which the disc is made up. There was a re -revolutionary job because the disc is very eclectic, but I think that live we have found a good formula, to date the feedbacks have been very positive and I am happy with this, because for me the live size is very important. Next appointments for now are in April on Bologna (on the same occasion, Stefano Pilia will also present his new album) and Florence, while in June 3 festivals await us: Ferrara under the stars, handmade, jazz is dead.