Someone is Listening

Steve Piccolo -Born 1954 New Hampshire USA. School and college in New York (Bard College, New York University). Now lives in Milan, Italy. After studies in New York (Roswell Rudd, Charlie Haden) he began his professional career in the early 1970s playing standup bass in jazz groups. Toward the end of the Seventies he founded, together with John and Evan Lurie, Arto Lindsay and Tony Fier, the group The Lounge Lizards. For five years or so the group performed all over the world, including international festivals and important venues. Their first LP (now CD, Virgin), published in 1981, continues to sell quite a few copies each year. In parallel with his activity as a jazz instrumentalist, Steve worked in the world of pop music, writing songs and lyrics. After having published two LPs under his name (Domestic Exile, Adaptation) in the early eighties (US, France, Italy, still available in Italy from Materiali Sonori) he began working with songwriters and producers on an international level. He began to spend more time in Italy, working with producers like Giancarlo Bigazzi, Caterina Caselli, the La Bionda brothers, Claudio Fabi, Toto Savio. He wrote songs for artists like Raf, I Righiera, Umberto Tozzi, Alberto Fortis and many others. The song “Self Control” written by Bigazzi-Riefoli-Piccolo (1984) with lyrics by Steve sold many millions of copies, reaching number one on charts all over the world. During the second half of the eighties he lived almost exclusively in New York, writing songs and music for theater. His favorite production from the time was “Ambition” by the company “Love Theater” (Peter Halasc, ex Squat Theater, the company with which Steve worked in the early 1980s), seen at the La Mama theater in New York. In the 1990s he moved to Milan and published two CDs with the collaboration of Italian and American musicians: “Hilarity Workshop” (Underground Records, Bologna, 1997) and “Bitter Pill”(Cox 18 Music, Milan, 1999-2000). His songs were included in compilations published by Sony and EMI, and a number of compilations in the United States). Starting in 1995 he returned to frequent live concert activity, playing festivals and theaters in Italy and around Europe with different line-ups, including Italian musicians (jazzmen Giancarlo Locatelli and Filippo Monico), members of new ‘rock’ groups (Massimo Volume, Afterhours, Rosso Maltese) and renowned artists from New York (Elliott Sharp, Zeena Parkins). For the record company Mescal (dist. Polygram) he produced the CD “Da Qui” by the group “Massimo Volume”. Work with the group continued in 2001 with a concert tour in which Steve also performed on voice, bass and rhodes. Since 1999-2000 his research has focused on the major project The Expedition, a narrative-musical work with many different parts, specifically developed for each city or venue in which it is performed, using the sounds of that city. In the early versions there were as many as 12 musicians on stage, theater sets were utilized, but without video images. After the debut at CS Leoncavallo in Milan and the version prepared for the festival Brescia MusicArte (both in 1999), the show was broken down into modules for separate development. Live work continued in duo with Luca Gemma with “The Secret Diaries of Bruce Chatwin”, at the festival Frontiere in Milan in 1999. This show was later seen in festivals in Pisa and Livorno in summer 2000. DJ-composer Gak Sato (from Tokyo) joined the project in 2000, in the show “Songs about Danger”. For the first time video images were introduced in the concerts, by Armin Linke. This piece was presented at the festival Frontiere in Milan in 2000, and developed at CS Cox 18 Milan a few months later. The project then evolved into a new Expedition. The first results were heard in “Getting Ready for the Expedition” in Venice, for the concert series Off Risonanze, and in Catania at Mercati Generali. Two of the pieces developed for this show became part of the CD by Gak Sato, “Tangram”, published in 2001 by Temposphere Records. From 21 March (premiere at Radio Popolare in Milan) to 15 July 2001 the new version “Expedition/Dérive” was performed in museums, cultural centers and festivals (Milan, Sesto San Giovanni, Catania, Mestre, other cities). In summer 2001 the urban sounds archive assembled by Sato and Piccolo began to produce many new compositions. New videos were also added, working in collaboration with the visual artist Luca Pancrazzi. The work was presented in the context of the MilanoFilmFestival at Piccolo Teatro Studio in Milan, 22 Sept 2001, under the title “Effetto cinema: musica alla deriva”. The collaboration with Elliott Sharp has continued for many years now, including a performance at Teatro Fondamenta Nuova in Venice 26 November 2001, in a duo entitled “Songs from the Frozen Zone”. After a positive experience at the Milan Polytechnic in the summer of 2001, in which the students recorded the sounds of the city to construct a performance and an urban sound map, Piccolo-Sato-Gemma with special guest Elliott Sharp did a concert and workshop at the IUAV architecture institute in Venice on 30 November 2001. The concert “Expedition/Dérive” was included in the series “Suoni e Visioni” in Milan, 11 March 2002 at Teatro di Portaromana, in a complete version with set design, special guest Elliott Sharp and new videos by Janene Higgins, Armin Linke-Paola Di Bello and Luca Pancrazzi. Steve performed on guitar, bass and vocals in the tour for the CD Tangram by Gak Sato in 2001-2. Steve Piccolo and Gak Sato also work in the field of “sound art”, creating installations for galleries and museums. They collaborate with visual artists to realize the sound portions of more complex works. In 2002 the song Green City by Steve, arranged by Gak Sato, was published in over 250,000 copies of compilations in the US, England and Italy. Expedition/Dérive was also performed in the Central Station in Milan, 28 May 2002 (see press release in Italian). Steve and Gak prepared a sound installation and concert for the MilanoFilmFestival 2002, recording and processing the sounds of the square in front of the Piccolo Teatro (22 Sept 2002). Steve participated in the project of Auditorium Records and MMT “A Year for Cage”, a one-year series of initiatives on John Cage, with the first concert at Teatro OutOff in Milan 27 Sept 2002, later at Radio Popolare. This project has evolved into the group Full Metal Cage Collective. Steve co-wrote and sang the title track “Spontaneous” for the recent CD by DJ-composer Painé, for Temposphere Records Spring 2003. In May 2003 Spontaneous was in the German Top 30 club charts. Steve collaborates with the radio program Remix on Rai 3, by Istituto Barlumen. With the group DE-ABC (Steve Piccolo, Gak Sato, Luca Pancrazzi), design of an urban installation, seen in the Urban Furnishings Fair of Esterni and the Isola Art Project show, both in Milan (April 2003). Steve and Gak have composed, performed and recorded many soundtracks for films and videos, including recent projects (2003) with Gabriele Di Matteo and a video on the history of the Compasso d’Oro design award for ADI. The latest video sound works have been for Adrian Paci, Ivo Bonacorsi and A Constructed World. Participation in the Isola Art Project, an initiative of a group of artists and critics to save an abandoned factory surrounded by two parks in a cool neighborhood in Milan and make it into a contemporary art center, instead of the shopping center fashion promo speculation planned by the city. Steve and Gak have recorded a one-hour program for WPS1 Art Radio (NY), entitled "Expedition". Steve and Gak are back again on the faculty for 2004-5 (their third year) at Accademia Carrara of Bergamo, teaching a course on "sound design". Steve will also teach the Sound section of the university course on "new techniques of art". Cfr. nn. Arch. 73.a, 133.a Technical Breakdown is an international sound art exhibition, which took place uin the public space of Cophenagen, denmark in November 2005 - January 2006. The exhibition consists of 5 different listening posts presenting 30 sound works by artists from 10 different countries.The sound art exhibition Technical Breakdown takes as its starting point the chaotic and unpredictable field of communication in which misunderstanding and the unspeakable take on a life of their own. The exhibition encourages "a grant of self conduct" practice, setting loose sounds and feedback from all spheres making it possible for them to diffuse and mingle into the sound-scapes we inhabit.The exhibition consists of 5 different listening posts, eahc presenting its own perpective pn the error. The listening posts introduce the audience to a numebr of unique sound worlds, using the technical breakdown itself as a strategy to give voice and body to that which would not otherwise surfece. Through circuit bending, cut-ups and samples, the sound art reaches into the environment and breaches the continuity of our rational experience of the world. The art works show us unconcious moods and phenomena, and connects circuits not designed to be connected. The surroundings are animated by sound which again enhance our sense of space. The sound works mark the installation sites by interfering and underlining, amplifying or unermining the surroundings. In this way the sites themselves take part in creating cross-references between the many different layers of sound that one is likely to be tuned in on simoultaneously, though at different levels of intensity. The listening post Panic Room turns up the paranoia and surveillance atmosphere in the shopping centre Field's. The intimidating refuge criticises as well as imitates consumer culture buffoon and chaos with sample of sound from media and the collapse of discourses. At The Culture House KIB, The Cones couples the harbour front with the another dimension. The sounds function as a portal linking the site to be underground and the mystical. At The Royal Library The Black Diamond, The Glass breaks the borders between inside and outside - between private and public - with its fragile, crisp sounds and forces itself on the visitor's itnimate sphere. At the cinema and film institute, Cinemateket, Sonographic Stele translates picture itno sound and sound intopicture. One language talks on behalf of the oher an dinitiates acomplicated dialogue on the verge of nonsense. In the web-basedc listening post, City on the Net everything is inter-twined cacophony - no sound is limited to its original context, while virtual cities are recreated as soundscapes. The artists participating in Technical Breakdown all contemplate events and notions that are out of our reach - and out of control. In the exhibition sound layers ranging from the fictive ti the real, from the cognitive to the evocative come together and form a sonic web around us.