Tribute to Gerardo Gandini, a musician without borders

The figure of the academic composer (we are going to use a deficient, partial term, for want of a better word) is almost ghostly in the panorama of Argentine culture. Rare are the cases where this character transcends the borders of the musical territory and mixes fluidly with the rest of the different artistic communities (literary field, theater, cinema, plastic arts, performance). He did it Juan Carlos PazIn his time, what he was was not only a shrill and somewhat cynical commentator on the local musical milieu – which he considered “small town” – but also a stirrer of the ideas that the new avant-garde was spreading. from Vienna, Krakow and other nerve centers of modernist Europe.

Another sample defines it: it was Don Porfirio, the protagonist of Invasionthe movie of Hugo Santiago which showed a Buenos Aires (here named Aquileia) about to be invaded (years before Hector Oesterheld there Francisco Solano Lopez they had imagined a first invasion, whose necessary operatic still lingers like a debt among local programmers). Something the same happened with Ginastere (remember the case Bomarzo) and the creation of CLAEM, within the framework of the Di Tella Institute, and now a little more, if we think of personalities who, through music, have transcended this territory and influenced the cultural sphere of our country with their ideas.

Whoever takes the job is Gerard Gandiniwho, by dint of hard work -Arlt dixit-, created an incomparable artistic corpus, at the same time as he developed an enormous task as a promoter of new music among us, and constantly intervened in the cultural domain. Gandini He immediately abandons the saying of the European avant-garde, to seek for himself the ways which, without denying the technical and aesthetic acquisitions of the great names of the 50s and 60s, will allow him to imagine his own music, far from the cliches. of the moment and that of one of his teachers, himself Ginastere. Musician without fixed borders, Gandini he evolves comfortably in the waters of contemporaneity, and forges links with artists from other practices, who consider him as a pair. It may be the number Ricardo takes the one that is most strongly associated with the field of literature. I bring here a personal anecdote: in 1992, I was a scholarship holder of the Antorchas Foundation, in a composition course given by Francis Kröpfl and his Gandini. The following summer we met at the same spa, I reminded him of where we knew each other from, we shared a barbecue and there he discovered that whoever was my partner at the time knew Pick up. Gandini He immediately showed interest in meeting him, so when we got back, we hosted a dinner party at my house. Five minutes after introducing them, Gandini I had already proposed Pick up write an opera on his novel the absent city. There begins a story of friendship that has one of its most endearing moments in the prologue that opens At the end of this endless summeran essential book curated and edited by Pablo Fessel there Ezekiel Grimson (Gourmet Musical), which includes everything written by Gandini apart from the music itself, as well as testimonies and reports in which he offers his critical vision of the music of his time.

One of these texts is the basis of a work that we are going to present at the opening of the cycle Gandini at the Borges, organized by the Borges Cultural Center – fortunately found – dependent on the Ministry of Culture of the Nation. In 1997, Gandini He has written an article for a congress to be held at the Universidad del Litoral. He called it “De modesty and other modesty” (making a play on words with a parallel article, written by Omar Corrad, entitled “De modesty and other modesty”). It is a text full of humor and irony, a somewhat disenchanted interior monologue of the avant-garde and, at the same time, a possible path for the choices that composers make when it comes to put to work. The said text (with some brief additions of Alberto Muñoz, Hegel, Baricco, Felisberto Hernandez there WB Yeats) is the basis of this work which mixes reading and music in parallel doses.

The cycle Gandini at the Borges (at the end of the note there is the complete program, with free admission), it is an initiative of the Borges Cultural Center and its director Ezekiel Grimson. Fortunately delivered for the entire cultural community of the country, the decisive intervention of the Ministry of Culture of the Nation, responsible for Tristan Bauerhas become a plural, unifying, inclusive space, which takes on the challenge of welcoming not only the music of Gandini -in a tribute as deserved as it is essential- but also the current creation of our composers, through the “Industria Nacional” cycle, a cycle which includes seven concerts per month, and in which notable national creators and performers participate.

Pianist of groundarranger of Fito Paezmusic lover mozart and of Schumannrenewing the look on the tango, from its Shipping fees (some of which can be heard in the cycle mentioned above), the figure of Gerard Gandini remains in the panorama of Argentine musical creation as an essential presence. His production, over the years, has been both a source of musical pleasure and a stimulus for generations of composers, who have found in his music avenues of exploration in the rigorous and playful footsteps of the maestro.

In 1992, the French philosopher Pascal Guignard writing hate the music. In one of his first paragraphs he says: “Throughout the earthly realm, and for the first time since the invention of instruments, the use of music has become coercive and repugnant. Infinitely amplified by the invention of electricity and the multiplication of its technology, it has become incessant, attacking night and day in the commercial streets of cities, in galleries, in passages, in supermarkets, in bookstores, at ATMs. where money can be withdrawn, even in swimming pools, even by the sea, in private apartments, in restaurants, in taxis, in the metro, in airports”. Today we live in a world that tends to suspend intimacy, privileging and exploiting the overexposure of one’s own, which discards the intimate listening of music, detached from any other medium, attraction or purpose other than the recovery of its own space from which to dialogue with us, listen to the music of Gandini, recovering these spaces where we are alone -but not in solitude- becomes almost an imperative. Ten years after his death, the Maestro is remembered as it should be: with his music on stage.

PROGRAMMING

Thursday, March 16, 7 p.m. | Norah Borges Room

Circle of Readers IIIof Marcelo Delgado (on a text by Gerard Gandini)

Readers: Abel Gilbert, Juan Cerono, Ezequiel Grimson, Marcelo Delgado.

The musicians: Sergio Catalanflute / Fabio Lovesocello

Círculo de Lectores is a series of works created by the composer Marcelo Delgado, which uses prose texts from different sources. The format is recurrent: a couple of musicians in the center, a variable number of readers who form a circle around them, and the public which in turn is organized around those who read.

Friday, March 17, 7 p.m. | Astor Piazzolla Auditorium

Sebastien Gangipiano. Sonata VII there Shipping fees

Pianist Sebastián Gangi will perform Sonata VII and several of the Postangos (Gandini’s improvisations on classics from the Buenos Aires songbook).

Saturday, March 18, 7 p.m. | Astor Piazzolla Auditorium

Silvia Daboul – And it will be

The concert will feature some of Gandini’s piano works from different eras: E sarà, Diaries, Interlude Prophet Bird from the opera Liederkreis, Three Sad Ones and the Sixth Sonata. The Three Poems of Silvia Dabul for voice and piano will also be included. Graciela Oddone is the guest singer of this concert/tribute.

Sunday, March 19, 7 p.m. | Astor Piazzolla Auditorium

Gandini Collective

The Gandini Collective Concert opens the second season of the National Industry cycle of Argentine composers and performers. Between the months of April and November, a work by Gerardo Gandini will be played at each concert of the Cycle, a way of paying sustained tribute to the maestro ten years after his departure.

* Concerts with free entry and by prior reservation on the CC Borges website. Limited capacity.

*Marcelo Delgado, musician and teacher. Curator of Cycles National Composers and Performers Industry of Argentina, presented once a month in the Astor Piazzolla Auditorium of the Borges Cultural Center. And the homage cycle Gandini at the Borges. 10 to ∞, which will take place from Thursday 16 to Sunday 19 March at the Borges. More info at: https://centroculturalborges.gob.ar/

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