MONTEVERDI VERTIGO

OUT NOW (Tacet Nota Label)
LP, CD & DIGITAL

This album is dedicated to all
victims of the war in Ukraine.

Burak Özdemir | Composition & Bassoon
Diana Ramirez | Soprano
Annie Gard | Violin 
Kaori Kobayashi | Violin 
Chang Yoo | Viola 
Linda Mantcheva | Cello
Mirjam Wittulski | Contrabass
Charlie Zhang | Archlute 
Daniel Trumbull | Organ

Tom Dingle | Producer
Natasha Dettman | Producer
Justus Beyer | Recording Engineer
Alejandro Mosso | Mix & Mastering
Daniel Mulder | Artwork Design 
Alessandro Seggioli | Assistant Director

With friendly support of 
GVL Germany
Vertigo Exhibition 
October 2022
Art House Jersey

LAMENTO DELLA NINFA
VERTIGO

CELESTE
SIGNOR QUELL’INFELICE 

SI DOLCE
RITORNO

A TRIBUTE TO CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI ON HIS 455TH YEAR OF BIRTH

If my love for you, 
was not for you, 
anyone could feel it.
Like any file on the net,
one click would open it,
another one could break it.
Like my heart,
skipping a beat,
it could be still around,
hanging on a cloud,
waiting to be restored.
Like the cracks on our painting,
centuries old. 

Burak Özdemir

 

MONTEVERDI VERTIGO – melting the time

Vertigo is usually understood as loss of balance or spatial disorientation. It’s the sensation that you may feel like you are spinning, when you are not, or you may feel like your surroundings are in motion, when they are not. I have tried to integrate this feeling, into my composition; Vertigo. Each note has a color and the combinations create a sensuous palette, which transports us while we are listening to Vertigo. The artistic language of Vertigo is full of hypnotizing and geometric figures, which appear in irregular cycles. I like to think of them as random currents of everyday life. Randomness is a form of beauty, which can be often witnessed in nature. Space is an eclectic collage. Life is a box, full of unexpected, coincidental events. 
 
I created the music of Vertigo in an inter-century collaboration with Monteverdi. Claudio Monteverdi played a major role in development of form and melody. He can be seen as the bridging artist between the Renaissance and Baroque eras, morphing Italian music into something unheard, something to be studied and admired in future centuries. In his compositions existing styles turn into new ones, where musical languages melt and reconstitute themselves. I took as reference and inspiration his three unimaginably beautiful vocal pieces to create the core for this new audio-visual artwork. I then composed three corresponding new tracks to link the 17th century musical material of Monteverdi with my contemporary music. 
 
The technology we used to master this music allowed me to render a distinctive tone for Vertigo, where the space is in constant change and the audience is experiencing the ground being rotated and lifted in an unsystematic manner. When Vertigo is on, we are confronted by an elastic, liquid time, in which the music moves both onwards, but also backwards. The positioning of each musical element is meant to work in juxtaposition to each other. This creates a balanced chaos, like structured choreographies. With this approach, music, perhaps one of the most abstract forms of art, alters our senses in most unusual ways. One should be ready to let go of the feeling of time and surely leave behind the rules of math, when entering the world of Vertigo. 
 
The whole purpose of creating such enigmatic and puzzling work, which interferes with our fundamental, sensual orientations, is to take us out of our comfort while listening. When it comes to time, we pursue our daily lives with overly auto-controlled behaviours, without even noticing how computerised we can act, despite our spiritual qualities. It is not only refreshing, but also significantly important for us 21st century human beings to be able to lose the sense of time, in order to just be; as the essence of life. 

TRACKLIST

1 – Signor, Quell’infelice SV318
2 – Si Dolce è’l Tormento SV332
3 – Celeste
4 – Lamento Della Ninfa SV163
5 – Vertigo
6 – Ritorno

Track 1, 2 & 4 are composed by Claudio Monteverdi and Burak Özdemir 
Track 3, 5 & 6 are composed by Burak Özdemir 

PODCAST INTERVIEW – MONTEVERDI VERTIGO