This is the third part of a three-part review of the full 35th edition of the AngelicA festival in Bologna. The first part can be read here ; the second part there.
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| Unless indicated otherwise, photos are by author |
May 26, 2025
Centro di Ricerca Musicale/ Teatro San Leonardo – Bologna
Wacław Zimpel & SAAGARA
Wacław Zimpel - electronics, clarinet
Giridhar Udupa - ghatam, vocals
Aggu Baba - khanjira, vocals
Mysore N. Karthik - violin
Camilo Tirado - sound technician
Speaking of music that radiates both the calm and the whirlwind within, enter SAAGARA. The four performers in this decade-long collaboration sat cross-legged on a raised platform, draped in colorful, loosely worn fabrics, and produced a vivid amalgamation of ancient and modern musical practices. Wacław Zimpel’s electronic sequences, generated live from his computer, served as a kind of digital śruti—a tonal center—but one embellished with rhythm and occasional glitch. Think of Praed’s electrified Arabic hyper-pop filtered through the lush digital excess of Romanian manele, but using Indian source music as the palette. Add to that two outrageously gifted live percussionists, Mysore N. Karthik’s smooth, grounded and sentimental electric violin, and Zimpel’s often jazzy, multiphonic clarinet. Weird. Good weird. Great weird. Weird weird. These were the moods the music moved through – not genres.
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| Wacław Zimpel & SAAGARA. Photo by Silvio Camassa |
The soundscape layered clarinet over dense, percussive ornamentation, all framed by ever-present, ornate electronics. It felt like this band was grappling with how to honor tradition amid the onslaught of digital noise – and their answer was: groove with it. Fast, synchronized vocal passages (like swarakalpana and korvais) unfolded in complex rhythmic patterns, punctuated by an unruly stream of digital flurries – from Wurlitzer-style keyboard loops to turntable-like scratches. The crowd was into it. The sixty-ish woman beside me filmed several extended (10+ minute) sequences on her phone, each capped off with a satisfied “bellissimo.”
Giridhar Udupa, who co-wrote the music with Zimpel, played ghatam like it was a full drum kit and a sacred object at once. During one song, he rocked it back-and-forth in rhythm toward his chest to mute it, and the depth of its resonance became even more pronounced in that suspended moment just before it was covered. He coaxed an astonishing variety of textures from it: crisp clicks from knuckles and nails, booming thumps from his palms. The fusion of rhythmic and melodic ideas from Western and Carnatic traditions didn’t land in any clear genre – and didn’t need to. It moved in ways that the grateful audience found instinctually joyful. The intuitions guiding the musicians to create this hybrid require no conscious explanation or prior knowledge when the result is so immediately recognized and beloved.
May 27, 2025
Centro di Ricerca Musicale/ Teatro San Leonardo – Bologna
Piccolo Coro Angelico
Arianna Carletti,
Agata Casari, Arturo Vespignani, Aurora Tuveri, Clelia Fontana, Cordelia
Vonmetz, Federico Cattabriga, Giordano Brembilla, Giulia Masotti, Ida
Guidotti, Leonardo Igor Provvisionato, Lucia Carbone, Maya Schipilova, Tea
Fidanza
Angelica Foschi - piano
Francesco Serra - electric guitar, acoustic guitar
Giovanna Giovannini - direction and coordination
Silvia Tarozzi - conducting
Molecole, Bruno Lauzi
Flakes, Steve Lacy, Tiziana Simona
Distratta, Silvia Tarozzi
Latte e biscotti, Piccolo Coro Angelico, Silvia Tarozzi
Peace, trad., arrangement Giovanna Giovannini
Verdi Prati, George Frideric Handel
Discese tulipano, Mirco Mariani
Le cose bella, Piccolo Coro Angelico, Silvia Tarozzi
Aldo, Luciano Berio
This performance marked the fourteenth appearance of the Piccolo Coro Angelico at the festival. The children’s choir rehearses once a week from October through May to prepare for this moment. The theatre itself was transformed – decorated with the kids’ own drawings, paintings, and collages of trees. Onstage, they wore white lab coats personalized with buttons, doodles, and whatever configurations their imaginations allowed.
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| Piccolo Coro. Photo by Massimo Golfieri |
I especially appreciated Molecole, the opening number: a chorus of competing animal sounds, followed by bouncy, jovial lyrics and a return to the barnyard for a feast of animaliciousness.What followed was a well-considered program of eight more songs, combining playful textures—windy whooshes, wild laughter—with moments of proper choral beauty. One young gentleman delivered an impeccably polished solo during Peace, arranged by the choir’s patient yet determined director, Giovanna Giovannini.
Le cose belle, one of two original pieces developed by the choir and their inspiring conductor Silvia Tarozzi, felt like a real hit: Serra’s guitar riffs were instant hooks, and the choir’s counterpoint—with voices split into sections—gave the arrangement real depth. I could hear the kids in the audience behind me yelping and dancing in their seats. After the encore—some things must remain secret—I caught one of the performers with a look of pure, stunned joy on her face, like a deer caught in the headlights of her own sudden emotion. One of the many quiet miracles this festival has been offering for decades.
May 28, 2025
Centro di Ricerca Musicale/ Teatro San Leonardo – Bologna
Mariam Rezaei
Pat Thomas
Mariam Rezaie + Pat Thomas
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| Pat Thomas. Photo by Massimo Golfieri |
One of the characteristics that makes Pat Thomas a legendary musical voice, to my ears, is the sly tricksterism he slides into his music—little samples (if he’s on electronics) or phrases (if on piano) dropped into an otherwise logical progression, signaling the many planes he’s operating on. Tonight was no exception. His opening electronic set jostled between wet, scribbled samples, blasted phonetic wriggles, clangy belltower resonance and quick-fade blister pops. Spaceship-landing intaglio mystified into backward-vocal woodland hoots. His solo felt a bit abbreviated—maybe due to the back-to-back-to-back ergonomics of the evening, with no breaks—but every moment counted.
Mariam Rezaei’s turntable solo, however, took things to another level – and then another dimension. She began with what sounded like isolated spins of mild ’70s rock licks, in the vein of Buffalo Springfield or Little Feat. Her gradual layering of these electric guitar riffs started inquisitively, then grew more purposeful, as her sequencing refracted those riffs through a prism of rhythm and texture, thereby extracting magnetic friction, blooming resonance and a ghostly urgency. She was drawing us closer to the music, like a consummate storyteller – then zap! she incorporated the second turntable. And with that came an outrageous splatter of manipulated pitches, chunked noise and fast-paced, twisted micro-cacophony.
Talking with the sound crew after the gig, we universally agreed: this moment—and everything that followed—was the apex of the festival. She had built such a powerful foundation of sound that the second turntable—calculatingly introduced for maximum multidimensional explosion—felt like an epiphany. If most turntablists, even great ones, begin with two turntables, Rezaei makes you feel the difference between one and two – which, in her hands, is seismic. Gerarda came up with a perfectly accurate and Italian nickname for Rezaei: the Madonna of the Turntables.
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| Mariam Rezaei. Photo by Massimo Golfieri |
Thomas seamlessly joined her onstage—no pause, no stop—and dove his piano straight into the whirlpool of her relentless flourishing. His presence instantly amped up the ante, the way centripetal force escalates as one plunges into the heart of a vortex. Vinyl crackles were overemphasized into percussive chaos while Thomas bounced springily from melody to chord tangling. He knows how to turn a phrase into a tapestry. Rezaei reached Amacher-like levels of room-vibrating frequency before diving into some glorious clutter-funk, and Thomas zoned in on Love for Sale-era Cecil Taylorisms to plomp everything along.
If she’s the Madonna of the Turntables—and she is—then Thomas is the Prophet of the Piano.
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| Photo by Massimo Golfieri |
May 29, 2025
Centro di Ricerca Musicale/ Teatro San Leonardo – Bologna
The Locals
Alex Ward - clarinet
Evan Thomas - electric guitar
Pat Thomas - piano
Dominic Lash - electric bass, double bass
Darren Hasson Davis - drums
Goddamn, this band was good. Whatever spark Mariam Rezaei ignited the night before, The Locals fanned into full flame tonight. First off, it’s deeply satisfying that Anthony Braxton—who’s long made a practice of reinterpreting standards—is now having his original work turned into standards. And with such love. And funk. I mean: this rhythm section could power a continent. The first piece was full-on dirty post-structuralist jive-bop. When this band dismantles a building like it’s a storehouse of good jams, it’s not just one neubauten that falls – it’s the whole neighborhood.
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| The Locals. Photo by Silvio Camassa |
A tear fell while I held my beer, nodded my head and cavorted in the back like “Il Porno Star.” For a moment, I imagined Albini singing from the head choir stall at the Certosa di Bologna, backed by intarsia that could’ve easily been a Shellac image.
I wish they could’ve played AngelicA – it would’ve been a perfect fit for their theater. The crowd at the cinema was overly dispersed and semi-somnolent, aside from those of us dancing in the back; at Teatro San Leonardo we could’ve packed the room and given Uzeda the reception they deserved.
An update, while we’re on the subject of visionaries: Chris Cutler’s Probes series, which I mentioned in the last installment, is no longer being supported by MACBA (though all the episodes are still online). He’s recorded nine more—done and unreleased—and is at work on the next. He needs a new sponsor: someone with educational or institutional footing, so the series can remain free to the public and legally navigate the copyright issues involved in playing back so much recorded work. So, where my academic avant-gardists at? I know you’ve still got your revolutionary charisma, “fighting the system from within” – well, here’s your moment! Flex those connections. Hit me or Chris up and we can make it happen.
May 31, 2025
Centro di Ricerca Musicale/ Teatro San Leonardo – Bologna
Doppio Duo VasiPacorig ZavalloniZanisi
Vincenzo Vasi -vocals, theremin, drum
machine
Cristina Zavalloni - vocals
Giorgio Pacorig - piano, rhodes electric piano, korg MS20
synth, effects
Enrico Zanisi - piano
SENZA VOCE (dal dentista)
Quartet
El Mirar de la maja(E. Granados/F. Periquet)
Zavalloni/Zanisi
From Canti Polacchi op.74: Wiosna / Zyczenie (F. Chopin)
I Wonder as I Wander
(JJ Niles)
Quartet
Papà ha la bue(E. Pasador/C. Zavallone)
Vases/Pecoring
Non credo / Brutto (V. Vasi)
Mai ti dirò
(C. Villa) Kensington Gardens (L.
Reed/M. Monti) Moscow Discow ( Telex)
Quartet
Semo gente de borgata (F. Califano/M. Piacente) Tempesta (T.
Honsinger, E. Cavazzoni) Fenesta ca lucive (Neopolitan
traditional) Un corpo e un’anima (D.
Dattoli/U. Tozzi) Un homme et une femme (F.
Lai/P. Barouh) Something Stupid (C.C.
Parks)
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| Quartet. Photo by Massimo Golfieri |
It’s the finale. Onstage: one piano player, one keyboardist behind a small arsenal of electronics and two performers seated with their backs to the audience under spotlights. The latter rise, and a lo-fi opera begins. Cabaret balladry, heavy theatrics and snapping. Serious snapping. Flamenco-level, wrist-stinging, tempo-setting snapping. Korg blips added a fine electronic shimmer to this otherwise heavily stylized. It ended on the word passione, followed by some suggestive breathing. OK.
The second number launched a cycle of duets between Cristina Zavalloni’s vocals and Enrico Zanisi’s piano. The style was operatic, theatrical and frankly opaque to me. I didn’t understand the language. I didn’t understand the idiom. I felt like I was smacking my head against a wall: I don’t know this tradition – not its history, not its grammar, nor how it’s meant to function. This was the farthest outside my domain I’d been all festival. And, perhaps with a little irony, it came with music that many might find the most accessible in the entire program. Excellent.
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| Zanisi and Zavalloni. Photo by Massimo Golfieri |
Maybe this is how most people feel when encountering the kind of music that feels second nature to me. Though I’ll insist—and vociferously—that even the most radical experimental music has a kind of built-in accessibility, even for total newcomers. This set, however, seemed to require a certain familiarity and fluency.
I can tell you one person who did get it: the guy two seats away from me. He was chest-thumping, he was clapping in rhythm, he was pounding his thigh with joy. He knew these tunes. He loved the snappy pastiche—the quick cuts from standards to schmaltz to bubblegum pop. His delight was so palpable that it pulled me in, slightly. It was really the musicianship that ultimately convinced me. If I can’t have a blast while a guy adroitly plays a multiphonic plastic kazoo to an extra-cheesified already-cheesy pop tune – then that’s my problem.
I definitely didn’t ‘get’ this set the way their cover of Jobim got me. But I’ve never been more thankful not to get something. It shoved me far out of my musical comfort zone – and that’s a place I love to be. Comfort, after all, has felt foreign ever since I was five years old, when the other kindergartners called me “weird” and I said “thank you,” and meant it, because it felt like having been seen. Places like AngelicA are where we can go to feel comfortably uncomfortable, and that’s an important kind of home.
Message to my mom: I do sometimes wish I’d given you grandkids. I know how much you would’ve loved it. I think maybe I would’ve loved it too. But it never felt possible, or feasible, for me. In exchange—because I also crave that big-family feeling—I’ve ended up improvising one: an international coterie of like-minded friends and collaborators, all in pursuit of genuine cultural revolution. You’ve met some of them. You’re part of their family too.
Impacchettarlo. I’ve got to give a shout-out to the sound crew for their extreme flexibility in bringing each performer’s sound to life across this wildly varied festival. And while I usually don’t care for visuals added to music—unless they’re developed hand-in-hand with the material—I’ve got to say, Gianluca’s light touch with the lighting effects really worked and didn’t distract.
In the end, what matters about this festival is not just individual moments but the totality of the full, unfiltered experience of living musical culture presented with care, with guts and with no need to specialize or sanitize. That’s how you respect an audience. You give them everything, not just the trendiest slice. To paraphrase Bishop Robert Barron, miracles are not interruptions of the natural order but intensifications of it. AngelicA is just that: a miracle. Not because it breaks the world, but because it deepens and intensifies it. It shows what the world can be when music is for people, not marketed at them.
Even the chairs—yes, the chairs—are arranged in thoughtful staggered rows, so your knees aren’t crunched and your ears and eyes aren’t blocked, even with a full house. That, too, is part of the miracle: a space built for listening.
And yet no national Italian paper covers it, nor any of the big international outlets that ostensibly specialize in keeping the public abreast of the most interesting developments in modern music and listening. I’m not comparing AngelicA to the other festivals that attract the most journalistic attention, where the crowd is divided into classes and calibers, and artists are ranked by the font size of their name. I’m saying: this is something else entirely.
Sometimes, walking the Bolognese streets for this month, I caught myself strutting to Stelvio Cipriani’s suave synth groove from La polizia è sconfitta . That theme dances in your head, gets in your gait. And maybe that’s the mood I’m chasing: a little defiant, a little dreamy. With moves like they are meant.
Maybe at times it’s sounded like I’ve gone out of my way to critique some things and champion others. Maybe it reads like I’m shouting from a varmint hole. That’s fair. I am a varmint. To rewrite my favorite recurring line from Avere vent’anni: I’m enthusiastic, it’s a fever under my skin, and sometimes that gets me pissed off. (Noi siamo giovani, belle e incazzate.)
Music is about people—not power. But even in the realm of experimental music, power’s still hoarded. The same personalities keep the spotlight and rarely share it. That’s why I highlight folks like Chris Cutler, Eve Risser , Mariam Rezaei,Pat Thomas—artists whose second nature is to lift others up.
As for me: I have no institutional authority. I don’t have a conservatory background or professional title. I can’t tell an A from a C. I could only tune a cowbell with a cobweb. My only authority is experience. Which, to those sold on the clean lines of weaponized professionalization—fellowships, awards, keywords and clout—probably sounds icky and gross, suspect and maybe even aggressively defensive. But I also have a stubborn sense of what matters, and I’m available. Even if that means I stay hollering from the varmint hole, so be it. Varmints got ears. And more importantly – they know a miracle when they hear one, which is what AngelicA is. Not a platform for prestige; it’s too unsorted and particular for that. It’s where music is made for people, and held like a gift.
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