for voice and double bass
Together with Dario Calderone
Since the beginning of their collaboration in 2022, Dario Calderone and Kristia Michael have been exploring the spiritual and transformative potential of contemporary music. Their aim is to create ritualistic performances that resonate deeply with diverse audiences, offering a shared experience of transcendence through sound.
SUM.MON is a contemporary ritual inspired by mystical traditions of the medieval Mediterranean and ancient Eastern cultures. Interweaving philosophical ideas surrounding the four elements—earth, water, air, and fire—vocalist Kristia Michael and double bass player Dario Calderone embody and share transformative states of being. Using natural elements such as water, rocks, sand and wooden branches, intense vocalizations and deep vibrations, performers and audiences are summoned in forgotten practices of sound.
The performance connects medieval and renaissance folk songs with works by renowned composers such as Giacinto Scelsi, Beat Furrer, Silvia Borzelli, Nikos Galenianos, as well as the performers’ compositions. The performance envisions the liturgical dimension of new music while searching for primal sensations reminiscent of ancient rites.
Program
Giacinto Scelsi: Canto del Capricorno No. I – EARTH
Dario Calderone: Isola di Tarān – WATER
El Mister d’Elx: O Arbre Sanct – EARTH
Kristia Michael: *new piece – AIR
Silvia Borzelli: Hard working woman – EARTH
Traditional of Japan: 五木の子守唄 / Itsuki no komoriuta – WATER
Nikos Galenianos: *new piece – FIRE
Giacinto Scelsi: Canto del Capricorno No. IV – EARTH
Beat Furrer: Lotófagos – AIR
Beat Furrer: Lotófagos I
“We were in a desert surrounded by our own image which we did not recognize. We had lost our memory.”
Lotófagos (Lotus eaters) alludes to the companions of Odysseus, who ate lotus in order to forget. The text by José Angel Valente set to music here is about lost memory […] Forgotten are thus sorrow, joy and the knowledge of death, that which first gives birth to the human conception of time. The desert is the place and the symbol of not remembering, an “other” state, which can be paraphrased in so many ways: as the alien, oblivion, nonbeing, death. ~Marie Luise Maintz
June 27th 2022, in Amare (The Hague)
Silvia Borzelli: Hard working woman
“We were in a desert surrounded by our own image which we did not recognize. We had lost our memory.”
Lotófagos (Lotus eaters) alludes to the companions of Odysseus, who ate lotus in order to forget. The text by José Angel Valente set to music here is about lost memory […] Forgotten are thus sorrow, joy and the knowledge of death, that which first gives birth to the human conception of time. The desert is the place and the symbol of not remembering, an “other” state, which can be paraphrased in so many ways: as the alien, oblivion, nonbeing, death. ~Marie Luise Maintz
Fragment from the live performance “Endless Journey” in Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ (Amsterdam), part of the NAPzak series by Nieuw Amsterdam Peil.
Kristia Michael 