I don’t think that there will ever be words accurate and nuanced enough to express the love and admiration I have and feel for Iannotta’s music, and all the “imaginatoriums” that it takes my mind to. Her sound world is so extraordinary, and extraordinarily detailed and different for each work that sort of each one represents its “at its best” of ear-peeks into her exciting, peculiar, adventurous sound world.
The flight of the dead begins. The trembling “orgelpunkty” sound sets the flight unflown in motion. This, at the beginning a bit obscure (or rather “chiaroscure”), a bit creepy, and a lot of bits shimmering sound you slowly realise is the driving power.
And the journey has begun. Iannotta is yet again taking us to the unknown. And as she does, you don’t know if you are seeing the macro picture of all the universes or the micro perception of an atom that makes each and every thing in any universe.
But you know that through this sound, through your ears, this atom-being of all existence has entered, and now is traveling through your body.
And the further we go (and as we arrive that 11th minute especially) you begin to levitate. As if this sound is changing the laws under which the gravity and earthly existence as we know it function. And you are being taken to the realm of pure existence.
If I would to listen to it live, being in the physical space would make even more obvious this feeling as if an invisible device that functions only by this ultimate energy is slowly, gently, deconstructing and dissembling the physical body. Your physical body.
Until it is just this collection of pixel like particles floating close to each other. Still keeping the resemblance of the human body, because of the frequency and way that the sound wave is manipulating the air in the space.
But then, because of this new state the music has made us be, being able to feel each element that comprises us. And its connection to the … universe? And this state to which you, your physical and abstract self, have been translated to gets validated in the very last moments of the piece. That very last sound, disappearing beyond the space and time. Where you exist. So you are left to question: where-when-what is “the existence”?
The above recording is performance by the exceptional Quatuor Diotima showing and giving the utmost care for every detail, every nuance that this sound can and should be, understanding the importance of even the tiniest of grains…
The “dead wasps in the jam jar III” is Iannotta’s work for string quartet and sine waves. It comes after the “dead wasps in the jam-jar (II)” [for string orchestra, objects, and sine waves]…
… which came after the solo violin piece, that first introduced this unique, lasting and growing material and base. And this curious speckle had the privilege (on multiple occasion, and hopefully many more) to play the later.
“Dead wasps in the jam jar (I)” for solo violin is something absolutely out-worldly. It is the first thrip with the sound to all these galaxies far away. That would have never been heard. If Iannotta wouldn’t have left the door of her imagination ajar (or rather- wide open). For all the curious ears to enter. And experience these galaxies here and now.