Italian quartet tellKujira entered IRCAM studios for an artistic residency.
The ensemble, consisting of Ambra Chiara Michelangeli (viola), Stefano Calderano (electric guitar), Francesco Guerri (cello) and Francesco Diodati (electric guitar) is defined as an “imperfect” chamber quartet, with two electric guitars instead of violins. Its music moves between contemporanea, electronics, art rock and free jazz, making use of a collective writing methodology that is a direct derivation of their improvisation sessions.
During this residency they will work together with REACH member Marco Fiorini, integrating Somax2 into their compositional and improvisational practice, building on their specific musical vocabulary and finding new ways of interaction resulting in new pieces.
This work will serve as the foundation for the development and recording of their next album, this time as a quintet, and will continue throughout 2024 with more research sessions and concerts to support the release of the next record work.
tellKujira was born in autumn 2020.
Since then it has self-produced a series of artistic residencies, focusing on improvisation and collective writing, instant composition, timber, prepared instruments, alternative tunings. It is in this process that a flexible musical path was born, in a continuous search for structure, open to contamination and which aims to discover a unique blend composed of abstract soundscapes, at times ambient, poly-rhythms, industrial timbres.
A versatile blend, which does not hesitate to de-construct any type of language. « We imagined a kind of rock band in the form of a classic quartet, with two electric guitars instead of two violins. By virtue of this chamber choice, every individualism has been set aside in favour of a We, a focal center that was also the center of our music. Collective research from a perspective that is not necessarily aimed at performance immediately has become the main vector for the emancipation of the quartet from individual individuals and for the search for a common language ».
At the edge of the world, in a white phone booth in front of Kujira-yama, Whale Mountain, there is an old black phone, disconnected. Anyone can access it and send a message to a known or unknown recipient.
tellKujira lets the wind propagate the sound waves to draw an imaginary immersed in reality and projected towards the unknown.
