Leiðarvísir: the first album by the WADI ensemble, born from the collaboration among Fondazione Merz, Almendra Music and hopefulmonster editore, will be released on May 26, 2021.
The musical project will be presented to the public with a series of online meetings.
Leiðarvísir marks the recording debut of the musical ensemble Wadi – promoted and supported by Fondazione Merz in Palermo – and is the culmination of many encounters, narratives, journeys. In fact, the collaboration among Fondazione Merz, Almendra Music, and hopefulmonster editore, in addition to the joint production of the album (available both physically and digitally on the Bandcamp platform at http://wadimusic.bandcamp.com), also gives life to the series of online meetings Vie dei canti dell’antropocene, dedicated to the theme of travel and Leiðarvísir, which will alternate the voices of Mariateresa Crosta, researcher at the INAF Astrophysical Observatory of Turin; Matteo Meschiari, anthropologist, geographer, and writer, and Angelica Cathariou, opera singer.
On May 26, the series of meetings will conclude with a live plenary session, moderated by journalist Eleonora Lombardo, with Per Barclay, Marco Betta, Gianluca Cangemi, Angelica Cathariou, Mariateresa Crosta, Willy Merz, Matteo Meschiari and Costanza Minafra who will share reflections and suggestions inspired by the songs of the album, on the occasion of its release on the market, scheduled for the same date.
The musical project Leiðarvísir (in Icelandic “itinerary, guide”) is the answer of a world that does not resign itself to the inevitability of the climate and civilization catastrophe, between pandemics and ever-increasing social precariousness. In fact, Leiðarvísir contrasts the widespread spirit of alarm with an imaginary that is both ancient and very current, aimed at remapping the paths of sensitivity and imagination. A sound story of journeys that actually happened in the past, remote or near, that comes to life thanks to the compositions, improvisations and interpretations of the musicians of Wadi: the wonder of the Great North by a geographer of the 4th century BC, the impossible escape to the Middle East in 1939 of two European writers and photographers, the itinerary of a monk in the 12th century from the heart of Iceland to the Holy Land, the explorations of the probes sent beyond the confines of the solar system by the today’s humans.
Thus, from the rich instrumentation of Wadi, a game of refractions and imaginative connections between musical codes takes shape, in which a 21st-century sax resonates in a German monastery in 1179; a double bass dances between oud strings and rebecs somewhere in Islamic Spain; an ensemble improvises a serenade between the Balkans and an artificial satellite, and a hymn to Apollo rises from the Arctic ice among the colors of an aurora borealis. At the very borders of travel, finally, the voice of a young woman retraces musical trajectories in a new beginning. Leiðarvísir is a true “journey within journeys” dedicated to an audience forced to stay at home by the pandemic, disoriented by the collapse of decades of unbridled individualism and orphaned of stories, places and intelligent “collective textures”.
Leiðarvísir can also count on the visual project by Per Barclay that activates a dialogue between the images of an ancient Norse drakkar – evocative of historic and extremely risky routes – and the cavallerizza of a famous Palermo palace. The juxtaposition of the images suggests a double reflection on time and space, past and present, and questions the possibilities of language and encounter between idea and possibility, travel and destinations: an enigma made of abysses, suspended across the centuries.
The Wadi project – whose name is inspired by the Arabic word for a riverbed with an irregular hydrogeological structure, whose fertile land promises rich crops, civilization and exchanges – was born in 2018 to connect the best Sicilian talents with the gazes and sound visions of the contemporary.
And Leiðarvísir is the discographic evolution of the Wadi concert that on November 10, 2019 transformed the spaces of Palazzo Branciforte in Palermo into a large sound box animated by live musicians. The creation of Leiðarvísir was developed in collaboration with the producers Almendra Music, which once again confirms itself as more of a laboratory of thought than a simple record label, careful to exploit today’s stylistic babel in strong and coherent proposals, in which the tools of phonographic art are placed at the service of music capable of reconciling roots, emotions, individual technique and research.
Leiðarvísir is on pre-sale at http://wadimusic.bandcamp.com
The appointments will be broadcast on the Youtube channels of Fondazione Merz, Almendra Music and hopefulmonster editore and can also be reached on their respective Facebook pages.
www.fondazionemerz.org
www.almendramusic.com