Maia Ciobanu: Excessive piano II

(Submitted by ISCM – ROMANIAN SECTION)

Maia Ciobanu (b. 1952) served as President of the Romanian section of the ISCM (2002-2003), Director of the Contemporary Music Information Center (1995-2003), and was the Founder and Chief Editor of the Contemporary Music-Romanian Newsletter. Maia Ciobanu has given lectures about her music at the Gothenburg Music Academy, St. Gallen University, Wuppertal Music Academy, and Innsbruck University of Music and she has published articles, studies, essays and realized broadcasting programs about contemporary music. The works of Maia Ciobanu cover many musical idioms: symphonic, vocal-symphonic, chamber, vocal, electronic and stage music as well as new musical and multimedia genres. Her aesthetic is influenced by the “library” concept of Borges and has profound affinities with Gaudi’s techniques and way of thinking. In a confused and cultural hostile world, Maia Ciobanu has affirmed the importance of the elite in a series of five essays known as “The Elitist Manifestos.”

Excessive Piano II with video accompaniment (2020) is a mixed work in which three elements – piano, electroacoustic music, lyrics – are accompanied by video images. The three layers are different both in terms of timbre (even if the electroacoustic sources process the timbre of the piano in a parallel universe) and in terms of time organization and evolution, as well as meanings that overlap, collide, recreate. The movement and transformations of shapes / colors add their own commentary to music and lyrics. The electroacoustic environment, the solo expression of the piano, the poet’s thoughts – each one goes through a well-individualized path in which violence can melt into lyricism and the abstract anticipates and provokes tension; it is an intersection of three worlds, of three perceptions, of three modes of understanding, of expression, of communication, it is also a dialogue that builds a common fundamental sense and in continuous remodeling. It is the reflection in itself of a world overwhelmed by its own transformations.