Enrico Malatesta is an Italian percussionist and sound researcher active in the fields of experimental music, sound territory exploration, and performance; his practice explores the relations between sound, space, and body, the vitality of materials, and the morphology of surfaces, with a particular focus on percussive acts and touch-based listening.
Can you talk about your musical journey? Where did you grow up and how did you start making music?
I grew up in the countryside near Cesena FC, a small town in the north-east of Italy. I started playing drums when I was 15 or 16 years old, trying out different things with my friends and then getting into jazz drumming a bit. After a few years, I enrolled in the classical percussion course at the music conservatory in Cesena. I liked to spend a lot of time practising the snare drum alone or focusing on other percussion instruments one by one. Over time, I was increasingly covering my percussion instruments with objects, bits of metal, and other random items in order to get unpredictable behaviour from the instruments, and I realised that I should delve more into music in order to find a field of action in which I could feel more comfortable. I was a good student, but not really interested in following a predictable path, or in any specific musical genres or structures/styles… I was more fascinated by creating abstract flows of acoustic sounds, an ephemeral presence shaped by the physical qualities of each instrument.
I got involved in the free improvised music scene in Italy and abroad, experimenting with open forms of graphic scores and performing for some experimental theatre and dance groups in Italy. The projects that changed me the most were an electro-acoustic improvisation trio with my dear friends Lorenzo Senni (on guitar and laptop) and the visual artist Riccardo Baruzzi (on soprano saxophone and turntable), and, more recently, a percussion duo with the Swiss master Christian Wolfarth. Both of these collaborations have allowed me to really taste the freedom of thinking and acting through sounds and to better define my identity as an experimenter/artist. I still live more or less in the same place.
What led you to percussion, per se? What sounds were you looking for and has this changed over time?
There were no specific reasons. I had no connection with music before I started playing. One night, a friend of mine came into the bar while I was playing table tennis and said: “Oh, you know, I started playing bass…I know it’s easy to find a guitar player, so why don’t you start playing drums so we can start a band?”. I said “Yeah, good idea”…the next day he gave me the phone number of a drum teacher at a private school; I started taking lessons but, strangely enough, I never ended up in a band with my friend.
I’m drawn to very basic forms of sound made from resonances, objects vibrating on surfaces, and unpredictable sounds emerging from clear drum patterns. I always work on the same things, trying to change the conditions, adapt my behaviour to the environment, and accept the beauty and fragility of acoustic sounds.
Touch and a haptic relationship with instruments and the sound that is subsequently produced?
I’m very interested in what we might call touch-based listening. Most of the time, when I play without a specific purpose, I tend to focus more on what the materials I’m using to make sounds are asking of my hands rather than trying to control them to achieve a preconceived goal.
Besides the more physical iterations—using the body and its interplay with a musical instrument—you are also active as a researcher. How do you approach the research and conceptual side of your work?
Basically, I try as much as possible to broaden my knowledge of the main themes of my artistic statement, such as the relationships between sound, space and body; the vitality of materials; and the morphology of surfaces, paying particular attention to percussive acts and modes of listening. Once I freed myself from working exclusively in the field of music, I found that many people across various disciplines were working on similar content, albeit with different subjects or approaches. I realised then that if I had been open to dialogue and collaboration, rather than imposing my own ideas on a particular artistic field, I would have found more opportunities to explore many different aspects of the material world, as well as the complexity of the relationships between human beings and their environment. So, thanks to the shared power and transience of sound in our lives, I find myself working with geologists, anthropologists, scientists, farmers, fireworks sellers, and so on…
Besides music-making, you also teach at universities and conduct various workshops. Can you talk about this side of your work?
I started giving listening workshops to performers when I was very young, while working with some theatre companies here in Italy. In this field, the transmission of knowledge is more horizontal, and I was very interested in exploring how my own practice with sound could have value for other people, other fields of art, especially those that deal directly with the body. Teaching, giving workshops and creating formats for the exchange of practice soon became a very important part of my work. Even today, I spend a lot of time reflecting on my activities from different perspectives in order to expand my field of action as a mentor.
What do you see as the most challenging part of your career, and which is the most rewarding?
So far, I would say collaborating with the French composer Eliane Radigue on the piece Occam Ocean for solo acoustic percussion. I’ve been touring with this piece for seven years now, performing in wonderful venues and festivals all over Europe and beyond.
What are you working on at the moment and planning for next year?
I’m in a constant flow of diverse projects as my interests and professional needs move on a very wide horizon. As for new projects, I am working on a solo piece by the German composer Jakob Ullmann, to be premiered at the end of next year; a new performance piece with the Swiss/French dancer Yasmine Hugonnet, to be premiered at the Triennale Milano Festival; some performances with Superpaesaggio which is a sound-space based trio with Attila Faravelli and Nicola Ratti; a new project that combines sound art and science, created with Attila Faravelli and Juan Lopez, a biotremologist who studies the vibroscapes of the natural world; and finally, the release of an album by a new music trio that I’m part of alongside Alessandra Novaga and Nicola Ratti called What We Do When In Silence.
Interview: Lucia Udvardyova
Photo: Francesco Caruso, Chiara Lombardi