AA.VV. (The Swimmers Quintet)
Music For Swimming Across the Pacific

C. Amirkhanian, L. Belcastro, A. Misheff, R. Sinigaglia, G. Tedde are the "AA.VV." who created this album produced on the occasion of the concert held on December 22, 1999, at the Parenti Theater in Milan. The CD collects the poetics of the strange quintet of composers coming from different experiences, but who seek a moment of synthesis capable of uniting and merging them into a common discourse. Performers who have decades of familiarity with music and its manifestations behind them. It all stems from a 1982 performance by Alzak Misheff during which he swam butterfly style across the Atlantic Ocean in the pool of the Queen Elizabeth between Southampton and New York for five days, for eight hours a day. However, he also swam in a tank on a plane across the Pacific, between San Francisco and Tokyo, suspended among the passengers, painting and playing with the Lighting II, a kind of magic wand connected to a computer. An experimenter of taste and action.
We are not surprised that an attentive musician like R. Sinigaglia (professor of electronic music at the Cons. of Milan, a position previously held by A. Paccagnini, his teacher) and a significant instrumental composer as demonstrated by Opal, his piece included in the CD, noticed the "swimmer." We are not surprised that other minds like Amirkhanian (his Walking Tunes is considered one of the best 20 albums of 1998 by The Electronic Music Foundation), Belcastro (among the best composers of recent years), and Tedde (multi-awarded for his compositions) followed him in these crossings.

A good album that showcases the "who we are." And good are the compositions that attempt to reconcile schools and sentiments in a great collective crossing.