This month's Radiophrenia. features Cucina Povera.

Presented on an annual basis, Radiophrenia is a temporary art radio station – a two-week exploration into current trends in sound and transmission arts. Broadcasting live from Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts, the station promoted radio as an art form, encouraging challenging and radical new approaches to the medium. Each year, the broadcast schedule includes a series of newly commissioned radio works, live shows, pre-recorded features and 12 Live-to-Air performances. The majority of the program is made up from selections submitted to an international open call for sound art and radio works. Radiophrenia is managed by Mark Vernon and Barry Burns and is funded through Creative Scotland’s Open Project Funding with additional support from CCA Glasgow.

‘I’ and ‘O’ as Compositional Basis by Cucina Povera

In ‘I’ and ‘O’ as Compositional Basis I look at the dual notion of musical empathy and musical tension as two tenets of improvised composition. The formal use of binary notation is inspired by a decorative oak roundel ‘Stirling Head n. 20’ from 1539. Its border shows carved notation used by court harpists. It amounts to some of the earliest courtly notation to have survived from Scottish renaissance. My aim is to follow the notation, incorporating musical traditions I am indebted to – collective, empathy-driven vocal vernacular, harmonies from classical and late modernism, and largely intuitive, found sound percussion. An innate desire, and the immediate possibility to transcend linguistic and epochal boundaries through sound have inspired this work. https://cucinapoveraglasgow.bandcamp.com/