The space between us all
O/Modernt critically acclaimed recordings are being produced and released in partnership with the UK label Signum Classics, with whom we continue to work on our ongoing themed series with scheduled releases in 2021 and 2022.
The latest album From the Ground Up: The Chaconne recently won the Gramophone Concept Album Award 2020.
O/Modernt vision is to use creative programming to stimulate an active and innovative listening that enables the listener to become more aware that he or she is the prism through which musical sounds are brought to life. We hope to create conditions in which you, the listener, can engage in a very active kind of listening.
In today’s over-polluted aural landscape we are constantly surrounded by noise representing itself as music: it fills our shopping malls, elevators, restaurants and even our homes. It is a desensitizing fog that eventually numbs our ability to engage dynamically with the music we actually choose to listen to. Relearning the art of active listening and aurally embracing the reality of music with heightened awareness reconnects us with the flow of sounds, allowing them to be a vehicle of sustained presentness.
O/Modernt and Hugo Ticciati's 'From the Ground Up' is a masterly, century-hopping exploration of the ground bass or chaconne done with terrific flair and imagination. — James Jolly, Editor-in-Chief, Gramophone
Borders evaporate and improvisation builds bridges between works, creating a sensation of hovering free in the air: like birds. — Svenska Dagbladet
Being means ground – ground means being.
— Heidegger
Originating as a sexy South American dance, the chaconne crossed the Atlantic to sixteenth-century Spain, where it acquired a reputation as a dangerous pleasure. Constructed on repeating ground basses, the form’s sinuous flexibility articulated two facets of the modernist urge to self-expression: the boisterous delights of turning the world upside down and the sweet sadness of melancholy introspection.
From the Ground Up: The Chaconne explores the history of the chaconne in Spain and Italy, and its acceptance into high musical culture. In England, it became a chief inspiration for Purcell, while in Germany it triggered the sublime achievement of Bach’s ‘Ciaccona’ from the Partita in D minor for Solo Violin. Also springing from this fertile soil are works by contemporary composers Johannes Marmén and Dušan Bogdanović, and a set of three improvisations – ‘Ground’, ‘Breath’, ‘Being’, featuring the elemental art of overtone singing.. These include the elemental art of overtone singing, performed by Gareth Lubbe, who studied with the Tuvan people of Siberia. Returning to the chaconne’s Renaissance roots, readings from Shakespeare by actor Sam West inspire extempore reflections by beat poet Baba Israel, Purcell’s ground basses furnishing the harmonic groove.
The album has been released on Signum Classics on 7 June 2019 and has been chosen as the Gramophone Concept Album Award winner 2020!
The Award celebrates imaginative A&R, ear-catching programming and, above all, faultless execution, all of which is found in this album in which Ticciati has surrounded himself with instrumentalists ‘so at one with the chaconne repertoire’
— Gramophone
In an aim to reduce environmental impact, the album has been produced as sustainably as possible. For every disc sold O/Modernt donates to charitable tree initiatives in India, one of the most important forested areas in the world to protect. Forests sustain nature’s diversity, benefit our climate, and support human well-being.
Additionally, spellbinding photographs by artist Serinyà and wildlife photographer Jose Pesquero are included in the booklet. The liner notes trace key motifs from Cervantes and Shakespeare through the album’s diverse tracks, whilst Hugo Ticciati’s introduction considers the importance of breathing as the ground of our being. The booklet also includes British Museum curator Irving Finkel’s reflections on the trumpets of Tutankhamun, heard in the twentieth century after an interval of three and a half thousand years.
Hugo Ticciati violin & artistic director
Luciana Mancini mezzosoprano
Baba Israel beat poet
Sam West reader
Johannes Marmén violin
Gareth Lubbe viola & overtone singer
Julian Arp cello
Jordi Carrasco Hjelm double bass
Cecilia Knudtsen viola da gamba
Alberto Mesirca guitar & theorbo
Christoph Sommer guitar & lute
Karl Nyhlin guitar
Svante Henryson electric bass
Henrik Måwe piano
Leandro Mancini-Olivos percussion
Nora Thiele percussion
Elsa Bradley percussion
______________________________
01. William Shakespeare Sound the Trumpet
02. Ground (Improvisation)
03. Domenico Pellegrini Armoniosi concerti sopra la chitarra spagnuola: Chiaccona in parte variate alla vera spagnuola
04. Anonymous Yo soy la locura
05. Dušan Bogdanović Suite Breve: IV. Chaconne
06. Anonymous Vuestros ojos tienen d’amor no sé qué
07. Alessandro Piccinini Intavolatura per Liuto et di Chitarrone, I libro: Ciaccona in partite variate
08. Johann Sebastian Bach Partita in D Minor for Solo Violin: Ciaccona
09. Being (Improvisation)
10. Henry Purcell Chacony in G Minor
11. Breath (Improvisation)
12. Johannes Marmén Inside One Breath
13. Henry Purcell Chaconne Ground in D Minor Remix
14. Henry Purcell Dido’s Lament Remix
15. Henry Purcell Two Grounds in C Minor Remix
This disc [Sonic Philosophy] is a rare pleasure. Music to feed both brain and soul. —The Arts Desk
Sara Kalic, Signum Records PR & Artist Liaison Manager sara@signumrecords.com | +44 208 9974000
The album evokes a fascinating world where silence and the spaces between are just as important as the sound. It is both bold and astonishingly natural.
★★★★★
Here [White Light] it is the combination of material that matters, and I found the programme both seductive and thought-provoking.
★★★★☆
...the character came from the strings of O/Modernt... Every phrase had purpose and colour.
Ticciati’s extraordinarily vivid playing holds it all together expertly.
Dazzling wide-ranging recital [Sonic Philosophy] played with captivating sensitivity.
★★★★★
Hugo Ticciati and his group O/Modernt surely represent something very positive about the potential future of classical musical performance.
