ZGB (Riva, Szafirowski, Fariello)

ZGB is an unpredictable trio trying to incarnate the very essence of improvisation: the mystery, the experiments, the silences, the irony, and last but not least the social, horizontal aspect of music making. Walking on the tiny border between instant composition and sonic impulsivity - melting both to create each time a different experience. The awareness on their instruments and at the same time the socratic «”I know that I know nothing”», a dadaistic musical approach, equally cultivated and childish. Alex Riva plays different recorders, using them to produce a multitude of different sounds, adding to the mix also his voice, both for distorting the flute sound and to underpin it with fragments of sound poetries. Mikael Szafirowski has a double background: both academic and anti-academic, the doubt is his daily bread, so don’t ask him any questions. Eventually he can make you change your mind about your answers. Sonically, he is of a similar function - once colloquial while at times obfuscating. There is a grain of noise in each melody, a sadness in gesture. His histrionic presence and attitude will capture you from the beginning to the end of the concert. Dario Fariello is focusing his sonic research on sound collages - saxophones of different kinds, both played acoustically and sampled, processed. The collage-syntax is a means to get to multi-narrative and multi-tonal music, a perception of faster speed can be achieved through interpolation of different tempos at the same time. The band’s multi-instrumentalism and the use of electronic devices and feedback are tools to avoid routines and break the wall dividing the performers and the public. ZGB can be a very intense experience, rich of performative aspects and subtle details, but it can be anything, really: the three performers jump into the moment trying to forget strategies as well as their esthetical backgrounds and rules of musical conduct.