[Terry Riley]
"What a fresh sounding landscape full of gems. You both are so gifted and such musically aware artists...it is a joy to hear what you have done together. I think it is brilliant that you came up with these fragments that somehow tie together in a unique way and unified way. Dwoworak... based on Chopin is a beautiful ballad up there with the best compositions of Miles and of Bill Evans. I love Debora singing too. Her voice is beautifully suited to the music she makes and really draws the listener in. Dove Va... Wow.. Wow GREAT!"
[Blow Up]
"one of the best italian releases of 2022"
[Audioreview]
"The beauty of NuovoMondo Symphonies and the ingenious "avant-garde pop" contained therein have been noticed by Terry Riley (he describes the album enthusiastically and appears in the internal photo) and Elliott Sharp. The singing now delicate, now crooked, the hypnotic piano roundabouts, the post-industrial rituals, the urban noise, the echoes of Robert Wyatt. Cultured and truly inspired work."
...We approach the Ra-Lerm region.
A storm is accompanying us.
Sirens in the distance. We feel a strange thickness in the air, brought by gusts of south wind. Then, rising out of nowhere, revolving slowly all around us, a vague, repeated, constant motif...
Debora Petrina and Giovanni Mancuso are the protagonists of an imaginary, ethnomusicological and pata-physical explorations in an unknown world, where they can discover landscapes, cities, and bizarre inhabitants.
They record their music and songs, and translate them into miniatures for piano and voice, adding special instruments and environmental sounds; beside, they offer their written observations, as early explorers did with their diaries and film footages shot during their explorations.
From dances for velvet slides to music pieces for pressure cookers, from storm rituals for apartment blocks to chordal instruments to be used in the kitchen, the NuovoMondo Symphonies offer a survey of the surreal possibilities of a world in which sounds and music enter the most unforeseeable nuances of life and nature.
published by zOaR records (Elliott Sharp)
Debora Petrina, Giovanni Mancuso:
compositions, voices, pianos, toy piano,
synthesizer, little instruments, field recordings
​
paintings and artwork by Alvise Guadagnino
​
pianos recorded by Riccardo Farnea at Zanta Pianoforti, Camponogara (Venice)
​
Debora's voice recorded by Max Trisotto at Pink Sound Studio, Padova
​
mixed and pre-mastered by Max Trisotto
mastered at Studio zOaR by E#
design by Janene Higgins
​
all compositions published by siae
CREDITS
NOV 3 2023
Brisbane - ST ANDREW UNITING CHURCH
OCT 28 2023
Sydney - INTERNATIONAL WOMEN JAZZ FESTIVAL - St.Stephens Uniting Church
JAN 10 2023
RSI - RADIO DELLA SVIZZERA ITALIANA - Studio Due
NOV 09 2022
Bologna - ANGELICA FESTIVAL
OCT 15 2022
Reggio Emilia - TEATRO VALLI
@NUOVOMONDO SYMPHONIES
LIVEVENTS
THE LIVE EXPERIENCE
TECHNICAL
"An hour that reconciled us with the deeper meaning of what pop music can be when it fearlessly embraces the avant-garde. The Beatles, Magma, Steve Reich, Diamanda Galàs have been evoked during the perfomance.” [Il Giornale della Musica, after the première at Teatro Valli, Reggio Emilia]
The performance is an innovative combination of live music and film: on stage Debora and Giovanni play two pianos with multiple small instruments (toy piano, percussion, synthesiser), and Debora sings in unknown languages, while in the background runs an original film, a collage of anonymous home movies taken from Super 8s from the 1950s and 1960s, silent films from the 1930s, and expedition documentaries, with specific relevance to what we play.
2 concert pianos amplified
Screen to project the film
Video projector
2 stage monitors
​
Debora
2 voice microphones, a DI box for a TC Helicon Perform VE (voice effect),1 microphone for added instruments, table
Giovanni
1 voice microphone, computer audio output, synth audio output, table
​
HEAR THE FUTURE
sydney international
women's jazz fest
28 october
st stephens uniting church
Sydney Arts Guide
"Debora’s singing ranges from incandescently beautiful melodies to discordant but fascinating vocalisations, and piano and keyboards have a similar diversity. The discrepancy is both engaging and awesome. The accompanying incongruous films add to the diversity and enchantment."
​
Australian Jazz Net
"It's a multi-layered musical landscape where a myriad of influences (pop, jazz, minimalism, opera, the works) seamlessly blend together, creating something of its own. This album, along with Petrina's latest one, L'Età del Disordine, are playing in a loop in my devices (and in my head) for the past few months, so when I heard that they are coming to Australia, I knew I has to touch base and ask her for a guided tour in this 'new world'." [Nikolas Fotakis interview]
>> View onLine
ABOUT
Giovanni Mancuso, pianist, composer and conductor, is the winner of the seventh edition of the International Orpheus Competition (Spoleto) for new chamber operas (chairman of the commission Louis Andriessen) with the opera Obra Maestra inspired by Frank Zappa.
​
He got commissions from important cultural institutions, like Venezia Biennale Musica and Biennale Danza, Teatro La Fenice, Orchestra Giovanile Italiana, Ex Novo Ensemble, Milano Musica, Sentieri Selvaggi, Orchestra dei Pomeriggi Musicali, Istituzione Sinfonica Abruzzese, European Association for Jewish Culture.
​
He has recorded as a conductor and pianist for RAI (Italia), Norwegian Broadcasting Company and RNE-Madrid, Spain.
His compositions have been broadcasted by Rai Radio 3, Norwegian Broadcasting Company, VPRO (Holland), Radio Brema, RNE (Spain) and performed in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, South Africa, Germany, Lebanon, Brasile, United States.
​
He has collaborated with Alvin Curran, Raiz, Charlemagne Palestine, Frederic Rzewski, Sylvano Bussotti, Philip Corner, Malcolm Goldstein, Butch Morris, Carlo Boccadoro, Debora Petrina, Lukas Ligeti, Frank London.
Debora Petrina, AKA Petrina, is one of the revelations of Italian independent music scene, and synthetizes in a visionary style her oblique and sensual songwriting and the experimentations of avant-garde jazz-rock and electronics.
​
Artist at 360 degrees, she goes from a solid preparation as a classical and contemporary pianist, with several premieres and recordings in the United States, to the use of electronics and keyboards, to the composition for different kinds of ensemble, to the particular use of voice and dance, also in improvisation.
​
She has recomposed a piece by John Cage; the score is now published worldwide by Edition Peters with the double name Cage/Petrina. She is the only Italian songwriter (together with Carmen Consoli) whose songs David Byrne has published in his radio-playlists of favorites.
​
Winner of several Italian Awards (the Ciampi Award among them) and producer in full of her music, she has recorded six albums as a songwriter (with David Byrne, John Parish, Jherek Bischoff and Elliott Sharp among the guests) and four albums as interpreter of contemporary music (OgreOgress e Stradivarius), with world premieres of pieces by Morton Feldman and Sylvano Bussotti.
​
Paolo Fresu has chosen one her albums, Roses of the Day to launch his label dedicated to voices (Tuk Voice). Petrina's interpretation of Only, piece for solo voice by Morton Feldman contained in this album, has been included by Chris Villars in his Morton Feldman Page, world point of reference for all concerning the American composer's works.
@NUOVOMONDO SYMPHONIES
MEDIA GALLERY