Neuguitars 2024 #28 Giacomo Fiore’s “Lost Horse Wash Drone,” a beautiful homage to the desert and to Lou Harrison
Other Minds, 2024
I think this is a sign of the times and the art forms we live in. It is becoming more and more common for a classically trained musician not only to prove himself a worthy performer in the world of contemporary and experimental music, but also to venture into improvisation and immediate composition. Take, for example, the Italian guitarist and musicologist Giacomo Fiore.
Fiore has premiered more than two dozen new works for tuned, electric, and classical guitars, and has released several recordings for Populist, Cold Blue, Pinna, Spectropol, Paper Garden Records, and his own label. As a scholar, his research focuses on American experimental music, intonation, and performance; he has published articles in Music Theory Spectrum, the Journal of the Society for the American Music, and TEMPO, and writes occasionally for Classical Guitar and SFCV. He teaches a wide range of courses in historical and practical music at the University of San Francisco and UC Santa Cruz. Giacomo is a member of Ninth Planet New Music (the chamber group formerly known as Wild Rumpus) and an occasional performer for New Music Works, sfSound, and other Bay Area organizations. He has served as curator of the Center for New Music since 2019 and as vice president of the Northern California Chapter of the American Musicological Society from 2015 to 2019.
“Lost Horse Wash Drone,” is his latest work, released on Other Minds. The CD features Fiore playing a variety of finely tuned guitars, along with field recordings from Joshua Tree National Park.
The concept for this album was born out of Giacomo Fiore’s week-long residency at the Lou Harrison House in Joshua Tree, California in March 2023. Surrounded by the desert surroundings, Fiore immersed himself in exploring Lou Harrison’s musical legacy, drawing inspiration from Harrison’s creative practice and his commitment to environmental conservation.
Armed with a fretless electric guitar, a resonator guitar (a copy of the instrument Harrison designed for his final composition, “Scenes from Nek Chand”), and his recording equipment, Fiore ventured into the heart of Joshua Tree National Park to capture the aural essence of the desert landscape. Despite the challenges posed by man-made noise pollution, Fiore persevered, employing inventive techniques such as inserting microphones into his guitar to blend the sounds of the environment with the acoustics of his instrument.
The result is something transversal, a kind of lateral music that combines the emotions immediately generated by listening, with a whole series of reflections that emerge later, slowly. It must be said that, sometimes, it is difficult to know which of the sounds we listen to comes from the field recording and which from Fiore's guitars. The author's ability to manipulate and integrate the different sounds into a complete and organic narrative quickly makes us forget these acousmatic and technical aspects to allow the listener to grasp a whole series of connections with Harrison's music and the cultural context in which it developed. In fact, you can feel that the music "Lost Horse Wash Drone" is inhabited by the gentle ghost of Lou Harrison, his gentle presence runs through all five tracks of the album that, temporally, seems to span an entire day, from "Morning" to Night".
"Lost Horse Wash Drone" is a very intimate and sensitive work, which reflects the profound influence of Harrison's music and ethics on Giacomo Fiore himself. I can't think of a better way to honor and, at the same time, go beyond the ideas of this great American composer, integrating them into a more contemporary vision. Listen to it calmly, several times, in the evening, perhaps after a storm. You will see sound flowers bloom in the desert.