INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY
Luciano Chessa in concert with Frances-Marie Uitti
The Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco commemorates International Holocaust Remembrance Day with a concert curated by Luciano Chessa and featuring Frances-Marie Uitti (cello, voice) and Chessa (piano, voice). The program includes two works, both inspired by Primo Levi.
The opening piece, QUEST[O] (for cello, piano, and voices), is designed by Luciano Chessa and Frances-Marie Uitti both to coexist with and to live alongside a selection of texts by Levi that directly address the theme of the Holocaust.
The second half of the program features the West Coast premiere of Luciano Chessa’s Piombo, a piece for solo cello written for Frances-Marie Uitti, and based on the chapter of the same name from Primo Levi’s book The Periodic Table. Using the two-bows technique that Uitti introduced and has employed since the 1970s—a technique that reveals unexpected polyphonic virtues of the cello—the piece alternates primordial rhythmic obsession with an expansive diatonic sound world.
Event co-presented by the Leonardo da Vinci Society of San Francisco, under the patronage of the Consulate General of Italy in San Francisco.
