A temple of education that for an entire day becomes a citadel of music, in memory of a great artist: the Interzone festival returns to Cagliari on Sunday 27th for its eleventh edition , hosted at the Conservatory of the capital and dedicated once again to Roberto Pellegrini , who passed away in 2014. Concerts and performances will take place from 10:30 am to 8 pm , including jazz, contemporary and electronic sounds and spaces reserved for improvisation and percussion, on a free-entry date promoted by TiConZero in collaboration with Signal Reload and the Region .
Among the organizers there is obviously also the Conservatory of Cagliari where Pellegrini himself taught, who passed away prematurely in May 2014. His research concerned the contemporary and improvisational spheres, leading him to collaborate with artists of the caliber of Mike Mainieri , Marc Ribot , James Wood and Giancarlo Schiaffini , as well as to study new methods of stimulating percussion instruments at the Cerm in Sassari . And among his latest creations, we cannot fail to mention " Le memorie dell'Universo ", with which he gave voice to the sound stones of the maestro Pinuccio Sciola .
Interzone debuted in 2015, a year after the death of the percussionist and teacher, as a day open to the public and focused on musical research and experimentation , founded on Pellegrini's own idea of a true "citadel of music " in which the public could come into contact with productions and studies carried out within the academic walls: and it is a vocation that also characterises this year , in a journey that passes through the Oppo, Palestrina and Porrino rooms and the main atrium , the internal courtyard and the entrance square .
The ladder
The dance begins at 10:30 a.m. with the sound of Marco Pittau 's trumpet transformed in real time—and enriched by live electronics processing—with the free improvisation performance " Wormhole " welcoming visitors in the entrance plaza . The performance then moves to the main atrium , where at 11 a.m. the percussion class will perform Louis Andriessen 's " Workers Union ," a 1975 composition in which the rhythm is precisely determined alongside relative pitches. The ensemble brings together students Sara Lentini, Luca Pintore, Riccardo Sarais, Pietro Piredda, Alexander Frongia, Alessandro Castellano, Matteo Simone Musio, Roberto Migoni, and Francesco Ciminiello, who will perform live again at 6:30 p.m. in the internal courtyard for a repeat performance. At 11:30 the Oppo hall will host the " Futurama " project, a jazz ensemble born from the collaboration between students and teachers from the academies of Cagliari, Cluj-Napoca, Cuneo, Tallinn, Vilnius-Klaipėda and Wrocław as part of the Erasmus+ Blended Intensive Programmes: the group will be back on stage at 3 pm , once again in the Oppo hall.
Meanwhile, the exploration of the boundary between acoustic instruments and digital manipulation takes center stage at 12 pm in the Palestrina Hall , with Matteo Floris and Matteo Sedda 's Flying MOSFETs , in a dialogue that brings together trumpet, electronics, and digital sampling with drones, glitches, and improvisation. Sedda returns to the stage at 3:30 pm with " Rooms ," a solo performance for trumpet and electronics with the addition of processing, loops, and layering, this time in the Oppo Hall . The late morning will then see a comparison of two different perspectives of percussive research in the Porrino room , with the duo Uccheddu-Castellano in " Nodas 18 " by Gabriele Verdinelli and " 2x6 " by Aldo Clementi , followed at 12.30 by another duo, with RAT – Running Against Time by Riccardo Sarais and Luca Pintore in a programme between timbre research, experimentation and a relationship with the digital universe, also including " Nagoya Marimbas " by Steve Reich and " 24 Loops " by Pierre Jodlowski .
The event continues at 4 pm in the Oppo Hall with the Matteo Maccioni Quartet in " Songs for Max ", a project based on compositions dedicated to the late guitarist, composer and teacher Massimo Ferra , who passed away in 2024: alongside Maccioni on guitar, Caterina Monaco on piano, Matteo Marongiu on double bass and Antonio Orrù on drums will perform. At 4:30 pm in the Porrino Hall , the Sandra Giura Longo Trio will perform, with the eponymous flautist accompanied by Fabio Mureddu on cello and Giulio Biddau on piano. This will be followed at 5 pm in the Palestrina Hall by the acoustic jazz concert " In the tradition " by the pianist Marco Morandini 's quartet , completed by Massimo Tore on double bass, Francesco Lento on trumpet and Alessio Cogotti on drums. Finally, the event returns to the Porrino Hall at 5:30 pm for two electroacoustic compositions created at the Conservatory by Marta Loddo .
A highlight of the day could only be the one dedicated to maestro Franco Oppo , at 6 pm in the room that bears his name: a fundamental figure for contemporary composition in Sardinia, paid tribute to by the Ensemble Scisma directed by Marco Caredda , through almost forty years of Oppo's production: on stage, Pietro Nonnis on the flute, Giulia Marongiu on the clarinet, Corrado Masoni and Lina Juknevičiūtė on the violin, Chiara Moccia on the viola, Omar Leone on the cello, Luca Micheletto on the guitar, Melania Bertolo on the piano and harpsichord, Riccardo Leone on the piano and Davide Collu on percussion. Once again, electroacoustic research takes center stage in the Porrino room at 7 pm , with composer and jazz pianist Rosario di Rosa using electronics to sample and retune the piano in real time, while at 7:30 pm the grand finale arrives in the Palestrina room with the newly formed Groove Market Big Band , a project promoted by Massimo Tore and Paolo Carrus and inspired by the orchestral dimension of jazz, in a deliberately complex choice that restores the collective work of big band ensembles, ideally closing the curtain on the "citadel of music".
