Official music video ‘Palestrina Gabriel’ created for Max Cooper’s immersive live show, ‘Seme’, commissioned by Salzburg Easter Festival (on 28 March 2024, also performing at the Barbican London on 4+5 April). Max’s collaboration with Uisato recreates human forms and movements seen in Italian religious and Renaissance art to amplify Max’s reworking of Palestrina’s ‘Missa Gabriel Archangelus’.
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Max Cooper:
I received a live show commission from Salzburg Easter Festival to create music and visuals based on historic Italian ideas, so the challenge arose of how to present a lot of what exists only as stills and concepts, as video sequences.
In addition to audio-visualisations of Cardano Circles, the Fibonacci Sequence (see the collab with Yoshi Sodeoka on my channel) and a project with photographs, I started chatting to Uisato because I wanted to recreate the sorts of human forms and movements that could be linked to historic Italian religious and Renaissance art.
He worked with China Labaig to map dance to historic aesthetics, set to my own electronic interpretation of a piece of Italian music from roughly the same period - Palestrina’s ‘Missa Gabriel Archangelus’.
I started the process with the original score, which had been made as church music for a choir. Not my usual source for reworking but there was some magic in there to work with. I pulled out specific sections and modulated some to make it fit into my harmonic world, but kept most of what structure was there in the original. Tom Hodge the pianist worked with the singer Kim Sheehan to develop a piano response to the Palestrina motif, and I responded to that in turn with synths, and then with the singer Sarah Aristidou. The whole piece was a sort of back and forth conversation between different musicians to build layers like a choir in time rather than in space.
The final process was working with filmmaker and artist Jon Bilbrough (Wilderthorn), to edit Uisato and China’s work into sequence. The idea is to present a new interpretation of the beauty and mystery that went into so many historic creative masterpieces. We’ve all seen them before, but I wanted to bring them to life as imagined metaphysical beings, and capture some of the magic which was imbued in them at the time of their creation.
I hope you can feel what I mean in there.
maxcooper.net
► Listen to ‘Seme’ EP: ffm.to/seme
► Buy tickets: www.maxcooper.net/event
Uisato:
Mixing the study of multiple paintings, sculptures, and iconic works of the Italian Renaissance era, with state-of-the-art IA tools and China’s profoundly emotive live performances, gave this avant-garde audiovisual piece as a result: gestures, emotions, movements, expressions, costumes, lighting…
We tried to study them as much as possible in order to properly capture Renaissance’s essence, taking into account what my custom IA models “read” from them. It was an intense, magical, and meaningful journey, with which China and I are deeply grateful for.
www.uisato.art/
CREDITS
Concept/Composition/Production:
Max Cooper / maxcoopermax / / maxcoopermax
Video: Uisato / uisato_ / @uisato_
Dancer: China Labaig / chinalabaig
Editing: Jon Bilbrough / wilderthornmusic / @wilderthorn
Composition/Piano: Tom Hodge / tomhodgetom
Synths: Niels Orens / nielsorens
Vocals: Sarah Aristidou / sarah_aristidou
Vocals: Kim Sheehan / kimi_sheehan
Additional Mixing: Aneek Thapar
Mastering: Chris McCormack
Music: ‘Palestrina Gabriel’ - Max Cooper featuring Sarah Aristidou, Kim Sheehan, Tom Hodge, Niels Orens
℗ 2024 Mesh © 2024 Faber Music Publishing Limited
Mastered by Chris McCormack at Blacklisted Mastering
Record label: Mesh meshmeshmesh.net + / meshmeshmesh_
Management: The Wild Seeds www.thewildseeds.com + / the_wild_seeds
All video & audio copyright is owned by Max Cooper and Mesh - no use without permission.