An evening between twenty-somethings. Billy, a romantic bachelor raised on lyrical poems, falls madly in love with Tamariah, a libertine polyamorous woman who is proud of it. Followed by their shadows, allegories of their inner states, they engage in a game of seduction, questioning their vision of love and carnal pleasures. Tinged with surreal humor and youthful playfulness, “Le Miroir aux Silhouettes” explores conceptions of love, from nihilistic scientism to inclusive relativism.
Project Requirements
PAGE contacted Valerio in 2019 to compose the soundtrack of their new theatrical creation. The director Garance Müller and the authors Arthur Rossier, Luc Bourquin, Luca Mastrullo and Lucia Jaccard asked him for 7 minutes of music that could be divided into several parts. The goal of this approach was to be able to use the different parts at different times in order to give a sense of homogeneity to the piece. The final piece was to be played entirely at the end with dancers.
The indications were the following:
- The style should be close to dark electro.
- The actors must be able to dance to it.
- One must feel a progression within the piece.
After reading the final script, Valerio could imagine the composition he wanted to create, and he could start working by communicating directly with the authors and the director in order to take into consideration their wishes and comments.
Project Details
Understanding that the piece was approaching a dark electro universe, Valerio was greatly inspired by minimalist electronic artists composing very strong emotional music (Kiasoms, Niels Frahm etc.). So he tried from the first notes to integrate legendary synthesizers, which are very present in this style of music. That’s why the very first notes are played by an emulation of the Roland Juno-60. After that, the theme is sung by a piano with little treble and a great depth, this style of piano mixing is quite common in the works of Kiasmos. The composition follows a minimalist evolution until arriving at an orchestral drop, highlighting some scenic features of the piece. Then Valerio needed to represent nightclubs. For that, he took the codes of techno. Finally, the composition ends on a rise, putting in relation the orchestral music, low-fidelity percussions and synthesizers in a way inspired by Moby in order to find a melancholic but somewhat restful atmosphere symbolizing the end of the story and the beginning of a new one.
Picture : Max Gigon