Pentimento

Crickets in Scopello reimagined by Jeff Dungfelder.

"To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is to not have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything."

— Goethe

"The foundation of this piece of music is based on a field recording (by Tenute Plaia Scopello) of crickets in Sicily at 1 am (creating musical melodies with their wings). The bottom of a cricket wing is covered with teeth-like ridges that make it rough, and the upper surface of the wing is like a scraper. When crickets rub the upper and lower parts of their wings together, they create a chirping sound called “stridulating." Listening closely, I discovered the stridulating melodies reveal a delicate beautiful world, layer upon layer. Hence the name of this piece, "Pentimento" (a visible trace of earlier painting beneath a layer or layers of paint on a canvas).

Pentimento is a Mediterranean requiem of sorts - an act of remembrance for all the many poets, writers, philosophers, intellectuals, architects and painters that have their roots in Sicily. An experimental ambient/drone re-imagining of 18th century Italian music, what might have been heard in aristocratic circles in church, at the theatre and at court, but updated with a variable density of sound that unfolds in time. Like in Pentimento, layers of shifting sounds and textures allow the listener to consider an Italian past, rich with history, contributing to the present ambient experience. And to think this all started by listening to crickets. Headphones recommended."