Alessandro Perini – “Geography. Borders” (2024)
for cello, live electronics and tape
Opening movement of the “Kilpisjärvi Sessions” cycle. The piece also exists in a version with electric guitar and piano.
Originally written for Collettivo_21 in a version that included two additional commentary parts for electric guitar and piano, Geography. Borders can also be performed as a solo cello piece with live electronics and tape. The cello part is heavily processed through a chain of delay, distortion, reverb, and transposition, with continuous control over the formant parameter of the transposer.
Geography. Borders was premiered in July 2024 as part of the complete Kilpisjärvi Sessions cycle at the Cantiere Internazionale di Musica in Montepulciano, where all seven pieces of the cycle, with a total duration of approximately one hour, were performed. Following the premiere, the piece was thoroughly revised thanks to the collaboration with cellist Elide Sulsenti, whose performance was recorded at Inter Arts Center in Malmö, Sweden, in 2025.
The work’s tape part includes field recordings captured during a hiking expedition that the composer undertook as part of a three-weeks art residency provided by the BIOART Society in Kilpisjärvi, Finland, in July 2018. During this residency, based at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Research Station near the Finnish-Swedish-Norwegian border, the composer explored the local landscapes, gathering recordings for what became, some years later, the seven-movement Kilpisjärvi Sessions cycle, a project supported by the Swedish Art Council.
In Geography.Borders, the recordings were made using AKG C411PP contact microphones attached to the metal wires and fences used to avoid reindeer trespassing national borders. The composer treated these fences as large string instruments, plucking and striking their wires like guitar strings to elicit resonant metallic, percussive sounds.
For the performance, the cello’s fourth string is required to be tuned one tone higher than usual. To avoid time-consuming retuning during concerts, a small custom 3D-printed capo was designed to fit Elide Sulsenti’s cello, allowing the string to remain at the desired pitch in a stable and practical fashion.
Alessandro Perini 