WE SEE YOU: review by Vasco Viviani on SodaPop

Ensemble Sous-Sol & Friends al Cinema Ex Rex Locarno

by Vasco Viviani

A remarkably rich evening took place at the Cinema Ex Rex in Locarno, organized by Carovana091 and the Circolo del Cinema di Locarno. The event opened with the second part of From Ground Zero, a collective feature film produced by Rashid Masharawi and Laura Nikolov, in which young Palestinian filmmakers and artists merge their perspectives on life under siege. The stories, hypotheses, hopes and dreams unfolding beneath the rubble tighten one’s chest, yet testify at the same time to courage, resilience, hope and an inescapable sense of fate.

After the screening, it was the turn of the expanded Ensemble Sous-Sol, which for this occasion had grown to no fewer than sixteen musicians, taking on the composition Sound the Alarm by the Australian musician Clayton Thomas. The performers included Natalie Peters (voice), Enrico Teofani (trombone), Hanspeter Wespi (cello), Ueli Zysset and Luca Sisera (double basses), Sheldon Suter and Thomas Canna (drums), Luca Manzo (Hammond organ), Francesco Giudici and Francesca Naibo (guitars), Fabio Martini (bass clarinet), Carlo Brülhart (saxophone), Nicolas Monguzzi (percussion and gong), Thomas Canna also on additional percussion, and Rosemarie Stucker (voice and objects). Sheldon asked the audience to move closer, as the performance was entirely acoustic and no nuance should be missed. Luca Sisera took his place in front of his laptop screen, and the winds opened the piece with their voices—a path first premiered on 7 June 2024 at the Petersham Bowling Club.

Gradually, percussion, bells, the strings of double bass and cello, the organ, guitars and voices joined in. Luca appeared satisfied as he guided the performance with sculptural gestures, silencing and lifting it again like a fresh dawn. The sound turned sly behind the sighs of voices and strings, with the winds slipping in cautiously. Then came bursts, groans and frayed wind sounds, yet cello, double bass and guitars never ceased creating a kind of calm, deep basin that held everything together. Only for a moment, though: another signal, a rumble, and Francesca Naibo and Francesco Giudici began moving into disturbed frequencies while Luca Manzo’s Hammond added depth, and the trio of winds surged forward, together with the voices.

Sirens, flurries of percussion, the calm but resolute strike of the gong. It felt like an aerial rise and fall, with Luca stepping onto the stage, shifting balances and chapters with his physical presence, leading to deep, dramatic sounds from the Hammond, guitar strikes and drums. Energy changed form and mass; a grainy visibility emerged, memories that under Manzo’s guidance seemed to gesture toward an almost somber past. The musicians appeared to exist in different states—concentrated, exchanging glances, waiting with surgical precision. What emerged was a powerful, very powerful collective sound that transcended the movements of the composition (which consists of three parts: OVER LAND, UNDER FIRE, BLURRED BODIES and FIRE, CEASED) in a cohesive and organic manner.

Fabio Martini’s bass clarinet found a magical moment with the gong and the two percussionists, with Thomas Canna’s physicality contrasting with Sheldon Suter’s soft-footed approach. A kind of homeostasis arose: the ensemble was not compact but supple, mobile and close-knit. A cue from Sisera set off another section, with Francesca Naibo’s guitar sounding in the air, among voices and percussion. Perhaps this was the most classically “free” moment of the evening, with Enrico Teofani’s muted trombone leading the dance before giving way to its clean tone, until a scream—likely Fabio Martini’s, though far from certain (more probably all three wind players, even beyond their reeds)—propelled everything further.

By then we were somewhere entirely different. A material anarchy overtook the stage, a kind of tribal frenzy that could easily have slipped into scat, but was in fact finely directed, held together by Nicolas Monguzzi in a jungle that felt warm and pulsating. Stop—the instruments fell silent. Only voices remained, all of them, different yet similar, exhausted and strained, their blending with Nicolas’s creaks deeply affecting. Distant cries could be heard, and once again it was Ueli, Hanspeter and the winds who nurtured motion atop the light touches of the percussionists. A subdued phase, yet buzzing with small sonic microcosms. Closing one’s eyes, it seemed as if one were gazing from within the cavities of a sleeping lung.

It was the end—beautiful and moving—of a composition one would gladly hear again and again.

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