Laura Agnusdei - The pleasure of free exploration

Just ahead of the release of the excellent “Flowers Are Blooming In Antarctica” we caught up with Laura Agnusdei to find out more about the album's content and the various stages of her artistic evolution.

Let's start from the end, that is from “Flowers Are Blooming In Antarctica”, an album that gathers the fruits of your constant search for hybrid languages, bringing it to a wider range of solutions than ever before. How did you arrive at such a result? How much do your many regular collaborations within the experimental underground matter to it?

The record took two years to make, maybe even more. It's a very choral work, one that thrives on an intense exchange with many musicians. First and foremost Giacomo Bertocchi (alto sax, flute, clarinet), Edoardo Grisogani (percussion, drum pad) and Giulio Stermieri (farfisa, synth, production assistant), with whom I recorded 4 out of 8 tracks live in a quartet setting: before we even got into the studio there was a lot of teamwork, and they were involved in the compositional process in various ways as well. The other half of the record, on the other hand, had a less live genesis, more of a studio production approach, and also features Ramon Moro on trumpet, Giovanni Minguzzi on drums and Teguh Permana on tarawangsa. Of course there's much more in it than just the people I've mentioned - there are years of exchanges and experiences with countless other people who have contributed to my artistic growth.

At the Conservatory of Bologna, under the guidance of maestro Daniele Faziani, I learned to play my instrument. I did so with the rigor of classical music, and that helped me on the technical side, but in its own way also on the expressive side, I have to say. Studying at the Institute of Sonology, on the other hand, allowed me to develop my own personal aesthetic within electroacoustic music - I learned an enormous amount, things that certainly resurface in my practice, but that don't rigidly define it.

Your approach to your instrument is anything but conventional, to say the least. The saxophone becomes a kind of improvised musical weapon, one that escapes genre classification to become a malleable source of sound. Where does this attitude come from?

In my opinion, what saved me is that, despite my academic studies, I've been playing in various independent projects since I was 16. That approach of free exploration, driven by personal pleasure, by discovery and experimentation, but also by a need to communicate and share, has never left me. Starting from that premise, I don't worry about what genre I'm playing, and my sax is free to move through different contexts without asking too many questions.

There aren't that many spaces, but they're doubly precious, because they're often created by people driven purely by a genuine love for unconventional languages (there's no real money to be made, which only attracts the bravest and most determined souls). So the audience can indeed be small, but it's often truly engaged - the experimental scene is an ecosystem, we're all interdependent, and being part of it is first and foremost a political and identity-based act, a choice. Of course it would be nice if there were more financial resources, but we're living in the Meloni era, what can we expect? They're cutting funds for healthcare, let alone what's left for the arts...

I'd definitely say the second. When I start thinking about a new album or anything similar, I try to focus only on the music I'm imagining, the music that I myself want to hear first and foremost, leaving aside the idea of how it will be perceived, whether it's something accessible or engaging – that's for others to say, you have no power over other people's ears!

Art synthesizes, that's its great power. It condenses the imagery, discourses and emotions of the eras it stems from. Art is political even when it doesn't seem to be, because every work carries within it an idea of the world, even without spelling it out in manifestos and statements. Our era is no different from others, it just has its own specific languages, different postures from the past, different mediums. So we shouldn't fall into the trap of thinking that because we're no longer in the glorious Seventies, art doesn't move anything in socio-political terms. It just does it differently, for better or worse.

As of today I only have very vague ideas about what the next step might be; in practice, I'm certainly convinced about the choice to step outside the solo dimension – right now I'm more drawn to the idea of making another album involving other musicians than going back to a more solitary approach.

How much did Maple Death contribute to making the album, and in what way?

F.A.B.I.A is the first release in the Opale series, a project by Maple Death and Canicola edizioni that brings together music and illustration; each Opale release involves the parallel production of an LP and an illustrated book, connected by a common thread running through atmospheres, emotional temperatures and glimpses of content, gathered together in a precious limited-edition box set that includes unique posters and design. The visual counterpart of my album was created by illustrator Daniele Castellano, an incredible artist I chose to work with because of his unique style, which partly reminds me of another artist I love enormously, Luigi Serafini. Jonathan Clancy, a mainstay of Maple Death Records, believed strongly in this album from the very first listen and is doing an incredible job with the release; I'm very fond of him and feel very lucky to have him by my side.

How will "Flowers Are Blooming In Antarctica" be translated live?

It's performed as a trio with Edoardo Grisogani on percussion and Jacopo Buda on trumpet, while I play tenor sax, and all three of us also handle synths and electronics to convey the complexity of instrumentation that makes up the album. There was a fair amount of rearranging involved, since the album is very eclectic, but I think we've found a good formula live – so far the feedback has been very positive and I'm glad about that, because the live dimension matters a lot to me. The next dates for now are in April in Bologna (Stefano Pilia will also be presenting his new album at the same event) and Florence, while in June three festivals await us: Ferrara Sotto Le Stelle, Handmade, Jazz is Dead.

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