7 NOVEMBer 2026, 7.30PM

Stefano Valanzuolo
Ensemble Dissonanzen

Cage, Life is All a Quiz Show

music BY John Cage

John Cage

Melody No.1 from Six Melodies, for violin and piano
Musica - Sonata for Two Voices (1st mvt.), for violin and piano
Amores (IV), for prepared piano
Melody No.3, from Six Melodies, for violin and piano
Water Walk, improvisation
Sonata for Two Voices (Fugato), for violin and piano
Fontana Mix 
Melody No.4, from Six Melodies, for violin and piano
Dream 
Stefano Valanzuolo narrator and text

Ensemble Dissonanzen
Tommaso Rossi flutes
Francesco Solombrino violin and viola
Ciro Longobardi piano

In the aftermath of John Cage’s death (August 1992), Sylvano Bussotti, who knew and, above all, understood the American composer’s work and spirit, noted in his obituary, «In Italy, he was not celebrated at La Scala but, far more prosaically, by Mike Bongiorno, on television. That is how he became famous here, by winning the modest millions on the quiz show Double or Nothing, earned at the very last moment by reeling off the myriad Latin names of the rarest mushrooms, poisonous or otherwise».
It is all true. It was Mike Bongiorno who, in February 1959, popularised Cage among the general public, along with a type of music deemed "experimental" or "deranged", depending on one’s point of view. Taking inspiration from that TV game-show experience, the text celebrates the bizarre aesthetic of a visionary and audacious composer, offering a snapshot of boom-time Italy. A joyfully curious Italy that allowed itself the luxury, for a few weeks, of choosing Cage’s music as the soundtrack to a collective dream.
Precursor to minimalism, heir of Satie, student of Schoenberg, inventor of the prepared piano, pioneer of “music concrète”, theorist of chance, creator of the “happening”: despite overly reductive definitions, John Cage was all these and more. Through a push-and-pull dynamic, the story of that now-legendary television appearance, the media echo, the journalist commentary, in short, all of the "sociology of TV" that sprang from that, is punctuated by a series of compositions specifically selected to showcase this multifaceted personality, capable of fusing the sounds and the voices of tradition with those of everyday life within the creative process.

Stefano Valanzuolo  Since 1989, he has been a music critic for the newspaper Il Mattino. For Radio3, he is the host and creator of the programmes Radio3 Suite and WikiMusic. He writes for the periodicals, Sistema Musica, Alias - il Manifesto, and I quaderni dell'Associazione Scarlatti (Libreria Musicale Italiana - LIM). Since 2020, he has been Editor-in-Chief of the performing arts magazine Live - Performing & Arts.
Among the volumes to which he has contributed: I luoghi della Musica, cultural guidebooks of Touring Club Italiano (2005); Il Teatro di San Carlo di Napoli (Arte'm, 2008); Rosantico - Natura, bellezza, gusto, profumi (Arte'm, 2013); Il secolo d'oro della musica a Napoli (Diana Edizioni, 2019); and Una poltrona al San Carlo (Guida Editori, 2021). He is Artistic Director of the "Maggio della Musica" Association of Naples. Since 2005, he has directed the MozArt Box festival at the Royal Palace of Portici. From 2008 to 2015 he was General and Artistic Director of the Ravello Festival. In 2016 he was Artistic Director of the Arena Flegrea in Naples.
His theatrical texts, performed, directed and set to music by Claudia Gerini, Rocco Papaleo, Michele Placido, Michele Riondino, Vincenzo Pirrotta, Davide Livermore, Alessandro Haber, Iaia Forte, Giovanni Esposito, Cristina Donadio, Paolo Cresta, Sarah Jane Morris, Roberto Molinelli, Orchestra Haydn, Toscanini Philharmonic, Solis String Quartet, and Quartetto Savinio have been presented at prestigious venues and events, including the Venice Biennale Theatre (Le sorelle Bronte, directed by D. Livermore), the Ravenna Festival, the Campania Teatro Festival Italia, Festival Pergolesi Spontini, the Teatro Coccia in Novara, the Emilia Romagna Festival, and the Teatro Pavarotti in Modena. He is the author of the libretto for the opera Il labbro della Lady and the melodrama Il convitato delle ultime feste, with music by Carlo Galante. He conceived and wrote the dramaturgy for Alienati, Italy’s first smart-working opera, the “zapping” opera, Tutto in una notte and the opera, Un bullo in maschera (music by Federico Gon). He also conceived and wrote the screenplay for the fiction, 3 voci di dentro, produced by the Teatro Pergolesi in Jesi. Formerly course instructor of "Performing Arts Organisation" and "Communication Techniques" at the Benevento Conservatory, he currently teaches the Master’s Degree in "Management and Communication of Cultural Enterprises" at the Naples Conservatory.

The Associazione Dissonanzen was founded in Naples in 1993, continuously presenting musical masterpieces of the 20th Century, experiments of the 1960s and 1970s, and groundbreaking innovations in music, dance and musical theatre.
The Ensemble Dissonanzen, a chamber group formed within the Association’s music production activities, has performed for major institutions including the Fondazione Premio Napoli, Musica Insieme Bologna, the international Ravello Festival, Ravenna Festival, Giovine Orchestra Genovese, Salzburg Festival, and the Cantiere Internazionale d'Arte in Montepulciano, collaborating with musicians such as Michel Godard, Cristina Zavalloni, Enrico Baiano, Markus Stockhausen, Agostino di Scipio, Jim Pugliese, Stefano Scodanibbio, Alvin Curran, Marco Angius, Giorgio Battistelli, Marc Ribot, Adam Rudolph, David Ryan, Gianni Trovalusci, and Evan Parker.
Notable recordings include a monograph on the chamber music of Hans Werner Henze, a double portrait, Dallapiccola-Petrassi (both for Mode Records), Bravade! Ovvero delle Metamorfosi (for Stradivarius) and Voi ch'amate lo criatore (for Itinera) in collaboration with Giancarlo Schiaffini and Silvia Fanfani Schiavoni. To mark Dissonanzen’s twentieth anniversary in 2013, a 5-CD box set was released by Die Schachtel, presenting a comprehensive overview of the group’s improvisational work.
In December 2018, the record label Black Sheep Power Desco Music released the live recording of the concert held in 2014 by Dissonanzen in collaboration with the renowned British saxophonist Evan Parker. In October 2018, Dissonanzen took part in the staging of Parole e Musica, a radio masterpiece by Samuel Beckett and Morton Feldman, produced by Teatri Uniti and directed by Andrea Renzi, the recording of which was broadcast on Rai RadioTre.
In 2019 the Associazione Dissonanzen collaborated with the Teatro Stabile in Naples to create its own season and in 2021 it was readmitted to the FUS, after a fifteen-year absence.