The meeting of Italian, Rome-based soprano sax player Andrea Mancini (who alternates on bird whistle and percussion) and Italian, Turin-based percussionist Filippo Abrate (who is also the head of the MUPE label) was inspired by a shared passion: the works of Leonardo Da Vinci.
Our Uncharted Microtones was first inspired by Da Vinci’s Paesaggio con fiume (Landscape with River) (1473), often considered the first “pure landscape” drawing in Western art. Its undefined lines – suspended between harmony and mystery – and its enduring sense of movement and anticipation became the spark for a series of musical explorations that eventually evolved into this collaboration. This painting led Mancini and Abrate to compose a cycle which corresponds with the four major themes dear to the Renaissance man: the relationship between humanity and nature, the shift in the astronomical paradigm, the magical world of dreams and, finally, the state of conscious wakefulness.
The title of the eleven-episode acoustic cycle was inspired by Joseph Jarman’s “Erika” (first recorded on the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s Non-Cognitive Aspects of the City: Live at the Iridium, Pi, 2006). The music was spontaneously improvised and recorded in one take. It explores unpredictable, uncertain, intense, and immediate sonic shifts, and deep listening as a form of intimate interaction. Mancini and Abrate offer a free-associative, opinionated conversation between the singing voice of the soprano sax and the resonant percussive instruments, and use the occasional microtones and silences to evoke an inner landscape still waiting to be explored.
Andrea Mancini / Filippo Abrate – Our Uncharted Microtones (MUPE, 2025)
