14/02/2025
OUT NOW: Lands End
Pianist Claudio Sanna performs pieces composed by Luciano Chessa
The imaginary of finis terrae is an archetype found in many cultures. It evokes a poetic triad of liminal spaces, oscillating between the realms of physics and metaphysics, alchemy and anarchy. This is the place where the immanent structure of the world, the physis of the landscape, encounters the vastness of the sea. This encounter evokes something beyond our comprehension. It is the place where the hidden comes to light and where the fixed and stable is transformed into fluid and immense, echoing the alchemist's goal of uniting opposites – matter and spirit, finite and infinite – into a higher, harmonious whole. And at the edge, the order of things is lost and carried by the melodies of Lands End, revealing a new anarchy.
A rugged, windy trail winds through redwood groves and over foreboding cliffs. Occasionally you’ll find small shelters (dens?) made of Pacific madrone branches, so polished they gleam like bones in the sun. But in a climactic moment, the land suddenly ends, and then... only the sea: a vast green horizon full of imponderable possibilities. Along the way you can experience the incandescence of a green rock, reflect on the failures and successes of falling heroes, the evolution of mores, the reality of psychedelic flashbacks, the ’Resistenza’, King Herod’s rage, and finally, how grounding it is to build art structures and then watch them gently collapse. Masterfully interpreted by Claudio Sanna, this album is dedicated to the optimism of the aforementioned walk: its unmistakable energy. A sense of frontier pervades these pages, many of which were created on the Pacific.
Lands End was composed at the Caldwell-Blaney residence in San Francisco and is dedicated to Ugo Rondinone; Wordsworth’s Daffodils was commissioned by New Keys; Inkless Imagination no. III, for Fedele Azari, was written as part of the Djerassi Resident Artists Programe; In His Raging was written at Les Ateliers du Quai during a residency offered by the Direction des Affaires Culturelles de la Principauté de Monaco. Finally, Green Sea was commissioned by and dedicated to Sarah Cahill for Terry Riley's 80th birthday. It was composed at the Civitella Ranieri Art Residency.
