Mirrors

The MIRRORS project intends to experiment with our faculty of imagination by relating the vision of director Maya Deren with the live soundtrack (baritone sax and trumpet) of two of her short silent films Meshes of the afternoon (1942) and At land (1944). A pioneer of experimental cinema, she passionately studied Haitian culture and voodoo rituals during her travels, paying homage to bodies in movement. The themes most touched upon in her films are dream, reflection, rhythm, vision, ritual and identity. MIRRORS was born as a tribute to Derenian imagery and the constant theme of the multiplication of the self.

The Self is narrated through dream images accompanied by a lively listening that could belong in a singular and personal way to each of us. The sound and the pauses that empty the environment take us into a colorless vision. The dream-imaginative experience creates continuous resonances in space. The research attempts to preserve the original silent vision of the works by thinking of the sound within us as a material that can be shaped by our unique feelings to give us a private and therefore potentially multiple experience.

Daniela Diurisi

Baritone sax and sound dramaturgy

 

Ersilia Prosperi

Trumpet and original compositions

DANIELA DIURISI

She is a saxophonist (baritone sax), deals with sound design and sound art, in particular experimenting with the possibilities of meeting between sound and theatre, developing a research path between performing arts and pure listening. She creates sound compositions for the theater and the media. She has worked in audio post production for cinema, TV, videogame. She deals with acousmatic performance and composition and she is a guest in Amiens (Fr) to perform her piece: “Cola la Notte” on the MOTUS acusmonium for the Journées Nationales de l’electroacoustique. In 2019 she organised, in collaboration with FKL (Forum Klanglandschaft), the 9th FKL symposium Soundscapes of work and of play, an international forum on the soundscape, within the spaces of the “Distilleria De Giorgi” in San Cesario di Lecce where since 2018 she has been involved in planning of community paths, teaching and production as a sound artist within the project “Alchimie – the De Giorgi Distillery community artistic residence” supported by Fondazione con il Sud, promoted by the International Theater Institute – I.T.I. Italy. She conceived the “La Città che Parla” project financed by the Puglia Region and created the ASC “Community Sound Archive“, a participatory process which involved the community of San Cesario di Lecce in an exercise of self-representation and recognition of the specificities of the inhabited places. She creates several radio works with a mixed language between sound art and audiodocs broadcast on Rai Radio3 and other local and national networks and works related to creative radio narration published by Audible.

ERSILIA PROSPERI

As a trumpet player and composer, she has worked on Italian and international projects. Her work spans from improvisation and Alt-Jazz to songwriting (Meklit Hadero, Amy Denio, Calibro 35, Antonella Ruggiero, Ardecore ft Zu, Mike Cooper, Orchestra Iato, Jessica Lurie, Emily Hay, Luca Venitucci, Alvin Curran, Giancarlo Schiaffini, Chefa Alonso). She is the founder of the band OU. She composed her albums ‘Pisces Crisis’ and ‘Scrambled!’, which she recorded at the Studio Litho (Stone Grossard – Pearl Jam) in Seattle with the brilliant production of Amy Denio, released in the US by Spoot Music and Public Eyesore. OU’s work has been presented on stages and radios (KEXP Radio) on the US west coast during two long tours, at the Joshua Tree Music Festival in Los Angeles, at the Earshot Jazz Festival in Seattle, at the San Francisco Botanical Garden, in Europe feat Amy Denio. With Diana Tejera, Edmondo was founded. Edmondo presented the album ‘Oops!’ in New York, Berlin, Madrid and Weimar. She has played as a guest of Meklit Hadero at the SouthBank Centre in London in the horn section with Pee Wee Ellis and then in Zurich and at the Norwich and Norfolk Festival. With Daniela Diurisi she founded the Mirrors project and composed the music for some works by the experimental choreographer and director Maya Deren. She moved to Madrid where she found a home in Chefa Alonso’s Orquesta en Transito, she founded the social brass band Fanfarria Transfeminista and started the Bocas de caracolas project with the director Laura Suárez and Marilena Muratori, and she composed the music for contemporary opera for the ensemble The HyperIntergalactics (Maria Prado Vega, Chefa Alonso, Raquel Sanchez, Jorge Frias, Guillermo Gonzales, Michela Becciu and Alberto Autiero). In Italy with Maria Luisa Usai and Alessia Siniscalchi (Kulturscio’K – Paris) she built the performing art work “Signore – Mia madre nel ’68 non c’era e se c’era non se ne accorta”. In 2021 she participated as a musician in Gianni Amelio’s film: Il signore delle formiche.
In 2022 she collaborated with the Italian publisher Kappabit, Folderol Records and for the third time with Amy Denio and her label, Spoot Music, on the production of the third disc ofher compositions for the OU project and with the Dutch composer Merel Van Dijk she has recorded the first album of the Zeezand project. She composes the soundtrack for the documentary about the great French director Paul Vecchialì, under the direction of the Italian director Antonio Pettinelli. In 2023 in Madrid she was an invited trumpet player and collaborated on the wind arrangements for the album of the Andalusian composer Sole Parody-Le Parody.