Radio Papesse

Composer and sound artist Alessandro Bosetti presents Journal de bord, an autobiographical work re-enacting his mother’s journal from a 1978 sailing trip from Gibraltar to the Canary Islands. This trip marks the beginning of her separation from the family. The handwritten journal is divided in twenty chapters – one for each day of the navigation – it tells of dolphins, sudden storms, fliying fishes, and turns at the helm.

The composer traces the itinerary of the journal with his own voice by tracking the edge between song and spoken language and choosing the form of a lyrical monodrama strongly inspired by asian theater and radiophonic fiction. He thus creates a work that is both ambitious and intimate, co-produced by the GMEM National Centre for Musical Creation in Marseille, the Muse en Circuit National Centre for Musical Creation in Paris and the Nouveau Theatre de Montreuil together with musicians Carol Robinson (clarinets), Kenta Nagai (guitar) and Alexandre Babel (percussion).

The radio version presented here is an extract of six days out of the diary. 

Alessandro thanks: 
Xing - Bologna, Silvia Fanti, Olivier Vadrot,
 Danae Milano, Anne James Chaton, Raphael Bathor, Piersandra di Matteo and Charles Bascou.

|| BIO || 

Alessandro Bosetti is a Marseille based composer, performer and sound artist whose works delve on musicality of spoken language, utilizing misunderstandings, translations and interviews as compositional tools. His works for voice and electronics blur the line between electro acoustic composition, aural writing and performance.

His recent works - such as Plane Talea (2015, ongoing), the radio performances Regular Measures (2017) and Je ne suis pas là pour parler (2019), the choral score Acqua Sfocata, Utilità del Fuoco ed altre Risposte Concentriche (2014) and the ensemble composition Cinque Maschere (2019) - reflect on the recomposition of a community through a multiplicity of voices. The musical theatre piece Journal de Bord (2019) and the radio piece Guryong (2016) explore different forms of audio autobiography and portrait; the vocal portrait is also at the centre of Portrait des Voix (2020).

Alessandro Bosetti has received commissions from prestigious festivals such as Festival D'Automne in Paris, Eclat Festival in Stuttgart, Festival Les Musiques in Marseille, from radio stations such as WDR Koeln, Deutschlandradio Kultur, Radio France, France Musique and from ensembles such as Kammerensemble Neue Musik, Die Maulwerker, Neuevocalsolisten Stuttgart, Eklekto Percussion and soloists such as Gareth Davis and Vincent Lhermet. 

He has been awarded several prizes for his work in radio art (Prix Palma Ars Acustica 2015, Prix Phonurgia Nova 2013, Prix Hörspiel de La muse en Circuit 2003, Hörspiel des Monats ARD, 2015). In 2019 he was nominated for the Bernard Heidsieck Prize in Paris and his works have repeatedly made the shortlist for the Prix Italia. 

Bosetti has published more than twenty CD’s and LP’s under his own name on labels as Unsounds, Bôłt, Holidays Records, Errant Bodies Press, Monotype, Rossbin and Sedimental and many others in different collaborative settings. A 4CD boxset collecting his most sginificative radio works between 2003 and 2011 has been released in 2016 by Bôłt records.