The arrangement of our pieces springs during rehearsals. We start from a score or a melody heard by chance from a record, and we begin to “hum” it with our instruments. That’s how, by means of a strange alchemy, the piece acquires its own shape, it consolidates without losing a flexibility that makes it living and always different during live concerts. Our instinct, and the intuition of a note or a sound, constantly lead the working of each track.
WAY FOR IMPROVISATION!
Some music impresses us for its sound quality, such as Armenian duduk, and in that case we try to reproduce it through the sound of cello. Other works have got an authentic ancestral melody instead, therefore we arrange them inventing new accompaniments without intervening on the melody, that is leaving it as pure aspossible. As for Jazz, Manouche or Gypsy Jazz pieces, such as “Minor Swing”, we rework the “noisy” sound of the so-called “Pompe Manouche” during improvisations.
Due to our Classical education, maybe the hardest piece we performed was “Billie’s Bounce” by Charlie Parker, which is characterised by a manifest Jazz imprint. When we have to arrange a Jazz piece without the rhythm section, we create it. First thing, we start from the theme, expounded by violin and cello, and followed by solo lines. The violin begins while the cello plays the accompaniment in place of the piano on the “walking bass” of the double bass. When the violin solo part finishes, the double bass and then the cello take up improvisation.
It is essential that none of our instruments is confined to its role or prevails the others. We exceed democratically; every instrument has the same opportunity to improvise. It is hard to be on the beat without a rhythm section.
PLAYING WITH SOUNDS
Playing with sounds is the basis of our music. For this reason, we want to seize the sounds of other instruments coming from cultures and ages far from ours, as it is the case of Seikilos, where the cello imitates the sound of Greek bouzouki, or the double bass imitates the sound of Irish bodhrán, or the violin and the cello imitate the “Pompe Manouche”.
IRONY
In our arrangements, irony is fundamental. Why not jest a renowned work such as Mozart’s “Turkish Rondo”? We imagined it as an almost Fellinian piece, a sort of band or small orchestra where, on famous Mozart’s notes, we indulge ourselves in some sneers, some quotations from Manouche and – why not? – Bluegrass music.