L’incontro
sospeso

Description

In this work, Roberto Pugliese pays tribute to two giants of jazz, John Coltrane and Miles Davis, orchestrating a science-fiction dialogue between their sonic spectres through an installation that transforms matter into living memory. Created in collaboration with Maestro Francesco Abbrescia of the Conservatorio di Bari, the work centres on a saxophone and a trumpet that lose their nature as inert objects and become vibrating, speaking bodies. No musicians manipulate keys or valves; the instruments' voices are released by acoustic drivers that excite their metal structures, converting them into organic loudspeakers. The conceptual heart of the work lies in the generative software governing this automated performance: an artificial-intelligence engine that metabolises the language, style and improvisational aesthetics extracted from historical recordings of the two masters and generates, in real time, a perpetual and unpredictable duet. The two instruments converse through computational mediation, giving rise to a simultaneous improvisation in which algorithmic logic merges with the profound legacy of two legends. A technological bridge is thus created in which musical memory is reactivated and made fertile, raising questions about the persistence of the artistic soul and the machine's capacity to become the interpreter of an immortal expressiveness.