Questionnaire
for electric guitars and voice
Words and Music by David Lang
Sergio Sorrentino, electric guitars (more than 40)
Barbara Czepulonis, questioner (voice)
"I was very happy to work with Sergio Sorrentino on this realization of the 'questionnaire.' I knew Sergio would make a good version of this piece because a few years back he did a great job with my electric guitar duet 'warmth'". (David Lang, New York City, February 21, 2021)
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What is your name?
What is the best thing you have ever tasted?
Who is your closest friend?
If you could have one superpower what would it be?
Would you rather live on the sun or on the moon?
What makes you think about tomorrow?
They are only some questions of this fascinating and introspective questionnaire addressed to the guitars and their players.
The piece consists of a voice that asks questions to the guitar ensemble and the guitars that give their personal answers by articulating, performing and completing the given musical phrases.
The score contain a series of questions and the musical beginnings of answers. “The players complete the answers for themselves – truthfully, I
hope. They are instructed to play their answers using the rhythm that they would use if they were speaking them out loud, which of course gives each phrase its own unique pacing and shape. Questionnaire has a central narrator, or questioner, who serves as a kind of conductor for the piece.
He or she asks questions of the guitarists, cuing their answers, and he or she has the power to speed up, to slow down, to bring in a new question before the old one has been completely answered, and to pause."
For this World Premiere Recording I recorded all the guitars by myself, performing and overdubbing the answers of more than 40 guitar students, professional and amateur guitarists with different kind of solid body electric guitars and archtop guitars.
The questioner has a woman voice, who reads the questions without any inflection, or change of affect from question to question, like a psychiatrist. The questioner is my wife, Barbara Czepulonis. We have recorded this track during a covid lockdown period and we have shared together great time dedicated to the art and music of the great composer David Lang. As we proceeded with the registration, David Lang sent us his opinions, valuable advice, suggestions. This was very important to us. Thanks a lot to David for his kindness, his availability and his wonderful music.
BIO - David Lang
David Lang is one of the greatest contemporary composers. Co-founder of the musical collective Bang on a Can, he was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Music for The Little Match Girl Passion, which went on to win a 2010 Grammy Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance by Paul Hillier and Theatre of Voices. He was nominated for an Academy Award and Golden Globe for "Simple Song #3" from the film Youth. Lang is the recipient of other numerous honors and awards, including the Musical America’s Composer of the Year, Carnegie Hall’s Debs Composer’s Chair, the Rome Prize, the BMW Music-Theater Prize (Munich), and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Lang’s works are performed around the globe by the BBC Symphony, the International Contemporary Ensemble, eighth blackbird, Santa Fe Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the Netherlands Chamber Choir, the Boston Symphony, the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the Kronos Quartet and many others; and at festivals and venues such as Lincoln Center, the Southbank Centre, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Barbican Centre, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Tanglewood, the BBC Proms, MusicNOW festival, The Munich Biennale, the Settembre Musica Festival, the Sydney 2000 Olympic Arts Festival and the Almeida, Holland, Berlin, Adelaide and Strasbourg Festivals.
BIO - Sergio Sorrentino
"A Superb Musician" (The Wire)
As a performer he promotes the classical guitar and electric guitar contemporary repertory. As a composer and improviser his music is based on sonic research and combines elements of contemporary classical music, minimalism, avant-garde, ambient, experimental. His CD Dream - American Music for Electric Guitar (Mode Records) was reviewed and highlighted in the New York Times by Seth Colter Walls as one of the "Week’s Best Classical Music Moments”.
Philip Glass published on December 2020 Sergio Sorrentino's video performance of "Orphée's Bedroom" on his official channels for the #glassminutes series. Orange Mountain Music released "Orphée's Bedroom" Single on all digital platforms on January 2021; the Single is earning a lot of success.
Sergio plays with the great Gavin Bryars ("Sergio Sorrentino has performed many of my works for guitar, and also my ensemble pieces that include the guitar and I have the greatest admiration for his work in this respect") as a member of the Gavin Bryars Italian Ensemble and he plays live and in studio with Elliott Sharp and John King.
He has worked with important composers and musicians like Alvin Curran, John Russell, Machinefabriek, David Lang, Steven Mackey, Usui Yasuhiro, Scott Fields, She Spread Sorrow, Paul Lansky and many others.
As a soloist, Sergio Sorrentino started his international concert career very early and has held solo concerts and master classes in many important festivals and venues (like Yale University, Sprague Hall in New Haven, Spectrum in New York, Festival de Música Contemporánea de La Habana in Casa de Las Américas, Cuba, Italian Cultural Institute of Paris, Sala Biala of the Wilanow Museum (Warsaw, Poland), International Guitar Research Conference/University of Surrey (UK), Vortex in London, Performance Room of Luxembourg, Filharmonia Gorzowska Concert Hall, ON Cologne Neue Musik Festival, In Situ Art Society in Bonn, Spectrum in Berlin, Nuova Consonanza Festival in Rome, Lagonegro International Guitar Festival, SpazioMusica Festival of Cagliari, Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte di Montepulciano, AngelicA Festival of Bologna, etc.).
www.sergiosorrentinoguitarist.com
released March 12, 2021
Questionnaire
For electric guitars and voice
Words and Music by David Lang
Sergio Sorrentino, electric guitars (more than 40)
Barbara Czepulonis, questioner (voice)
Cover by Barbara Czepulonis
Recorded in 2020 in Vercelli, Italy
Produced by Sergio Sorrentino
Mastering by Pierluigi Colangelo
Sergio plays Fender and Ibanez Guitars
Questionnaire was commissioned by the Roger Shapiro Fund for New Music
for Sheer Pluck, 3rd Street Music School and New Sounds Live.
