author Ana-Maria MUNTEANU
The world of composer, professor, conductor and pianist Dinu Ghezzo is a “bridge of dimensions”. Just as Greek hero Aeneas who he hasn‘t hesitated to design in the technological sublime ( multimedia project “Voyages of Aeneas”), the musician built a musical and artistic identity based on sonicity, creativity and space movementsby linking contemporary music to the diversity of cultural expression forms consolidating the memory of groups and the dialogue of creative elites. He is professor emeritus at New York University , Steindhard School of Culture, Education and Human Development. Having a complex musician profile, that of professor and international events director- in the U.S., Italy, Poland, Germany, Romania, Greece, South Korea, Japan and others –he needs be put in relation with the program of distinguished academic institution to which “society is a form of communication”, and arts are being studied and redefined by themselves in one of the most dynamic cultural centers of the world, New York.
In this context, Dinu Ghezzo is promoter of music development, arts and technology in response to deep changes of society and contemporary American culture, linking the rigorous academic musical training with interartistic and social “village” type laboratory . In addition to theory and experimentation with sound, redefining the physical space as sound and aesthetic space, this concept requires an integration of creative experiences in the cultural life of various communities, adding to specialization of music expertise aiming to promote new music and groups in concert-rooms and in unconventional spaces, acoustic solutions, live recordings, improvisation workshops, first auditions, communication and organizational skills, interartistic and interacademic dialogue facilitated by online communication.
Dinu Ghezzo was born into a family of greeks and italians at Tuzla ( Constanta) a region of Romania known since the beginning of last century as “little America” because of its ethnic and cultural diversity. He studied, conducted, music theory and composition at the Conservatory of Bucharest, where he became assistant at the chair of composition immediately after studies completion. In the early 70‘s he manages to escape from communist România and to reach the west coast of USA, following, together with his wife Martha Arkossy Ghezzo ( now peofessor at CUNY, New York) a route that was marked by big tests and difficulties, which he will firmly end by obtaining his doctorate in technology and composition at UCLA in 1973, but also due to his inspired decision to establish in New York, the metropolis whose multicultural spirit and enormous artistic energy will reflect its own world , the open space that will happily answer its many academic and artistic projects involving both great personalities , professors and students in technology and composition class. Here he will meet John Cage, Milton Babbitt, Leo Kraft, will collaborate with great Jews of Romanian origin, who, in the activities of George Enescu Foundation in New York ( professor Dinu Ghezzo being the vice-president ) they maintained alive the memory of George Enescu in American space, Lorry Walfisch or Sergiu Comissiona, and not least, he will initiate composition programs for hundreds of students from around the world who came to study and contribute in a creative way to the sound relations with technology, poetry, visual arts, space, light and video image, and, especially with the multi-ethnic and racial background, inexhaustible resource of imaginaries and artistic interaction. During doctoral programs which he coordinated over the past decades he has generated unprecedented connections between search and self-discovery – in and through multiple possibilities offered by dialogue with the computer in the contemporary musical thinking- and live sound worlds represented by musical cultures ( as irreducible diversity of mono/poly/omo and heterophony textures) approached during musical rites: from the west ones of recital and concert, to those of traditional cultures , to jazz and underground. The exploration of new possibilities offered by sound experimentation during creative multimedia applications integrated research that led to the appearance and development of the internet, the creation of musical and educational software, to the film industry uses, to animated film, live sound in open spaces, areas of global “cultural market” which provides a professional wide range offer for musicians, equally for developers of new communication technologies, Dinu Ghezzo – being in the epicenter of this real boom which marked under all aspects contemporary civilization and art departments of inter and transdisciplinary oriented American universities- had a decisive role.
In this context understanding intercultural dimensions and facets of his intercultural activities hits his huge accumulation of data and difficulty of articulating some leading perspectives beyond standard musical biography already published in Baker Music Dictionary, in Geschichte und Gegenwart, in Who‘s Who in Music, in J. Machlis Contemporary Composers, etc. Our approach was to select, from all references, the most significant for revealing intercultural dynamics of West-East and to “reconstitute” the almost four decades of activity in American and world space based on articles from authorized sources ( The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Time, Musical America, Twentieth Century Music Record Review, Le Devoir ( Montreal), Le Parisien, Le Courier de France, La Nazione( Firenze) , Gazetta della Sera, university publications- The Oldenburg University Press, The Royal Academy of Music, Brussels, etc.., in România- Music magazine ( Bucharest ), newspaper: România Liberă, The Truth, The Tribune( Cluj ), and also from impressive siteography in several languages ( English, Romanian, German, Greek, Italian, Korean, etc.). Thus we managed to follow the movement directions and concentration of physical, cultural, human distances in artistic and academic integrated communities in which coexists communication models specific to the hierarchically structured “space” with platform type of dissemination , combination able to reduce cultural bias through the program of opening new music to diversity of expression and artistic cooperation and musical life development as part of intercultural artistic practices. Dinu Ghezzo follows a path similar to that of director Peter Brook who in the 80‘s put on Shakespeare‘s theater with multiracial casts revealing a primary cultural background, a sapiential common layer which also referred to Paul Ricoeur, a profound language aspect which receives and reflects diversity as a frequency scale on which identifications take place. This methodological step allowed us the organization, evaluation and interpretation of relevant data for professor’s Ghezzo activity by:
- recording informational density in the public sphere through the analysis of media cover ( the major daily newspapers and specialized magazines)
- identifying artistic networks and events generated during projects and stability of these networks evaluated on the basis of multiannual periodicity
- correlating ( geographical ) space dimension with anthropological approach in fields connected through events and institutional , art projects, intercultural network developer
Thus, the 8th decade is mostly “American” and “Canadian”, and the 9th decade is marked by intensification of relations with the musical world from France, Belgium, Italy, Germany- at level academic exchange , workshops organization, conferences, master classes and summer courses for American and foreign students in sites with a cultural, archaeological, touristy relevance. After 1989, Dinu Ghezzo is more and more actively involved in what we may call a Romanian-American visibility interface – events, contacts, partnerships with music academies, with contemporary music festivals, with orchestras and independent artists in Bucharest, Constanţa, Oradea, Timişoara, Cluj- revealing, in the window of musical and direct interpersonal relations and that of technology, a Romania significantly different from its image in the U.S. at that time. A world freed through music, poetry and classical myths of Greek antiquity- within which the musician was defined , the traveler, Dinu Ghezzo and no less, the entrepreneur of nomadological essence ( within the meaning given by G. Deleuze and F. Guattari in “ Nomadology Treaty” in 1972) almost a pharmacology based on dialogue, in the spirit of American universities and artistic environments, being equivalent with a discovery of self-liberty, a breach in post communist mental , possible on the dynamic phenomenon background of opening cultural centers in România to the West at that time, a vital artistic dialogue that must be seen also on the other side of the coin, as the rediscovery of a dense artistic background and as free circulation of top artistic individualities suffocated by the institutional and mental blocking in the last decades of communism. In this post-December stage composer and festival director‘s approach ( The Anniversary of Romanian-American Music in New York, Constanţa, Bucharest, Oradea, Timişoara ) runs in parallel in România, Hungary, Serbia and Greece within interacademic cooperation programs of NYU and by integrating academic activities with concert ones.
The project manger’s amplitude was permanently doubled by a strong recognition of his compositions‘ value issued by publishing houses like Salabert in Paris, Musica Scritta, TGE in Milan and Rome, Seesaw Music Corporation in New York. He‘s invited as a member at numerous U.S. and international competitions- composition contest ”Pierre Schaffer”, “International Competition “G. Enescu”, INMC. Supports many concerts as a performer and conductor of some contemporary ensembles at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, festivals in Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Bruxelles, Helsinki, Cologne, Rome, Venice, Budapest, Tokyo, Seoul, etc..He‘s senior Fulbright since 2006, residence composer at the Festival in Dresden, at Hochschule der Kunste- Berlin, Jerusalem Music Academy. In 2004 he receives the “ Doctor Honoris Causa” title of Ovidius University (Constanţa).
Starting with 2000 develops a series of multiartistic and multicultural projects which combine online communication and web resources with live-events in urban, archaeological sites, established or unconventional cultural spaces. These projects initiated experimentally in the past decade, explore and enhance hypertextual, interactive form of creativity in extension to forms based on improvisation. The projects In Search of Euridice, The Eye of Cassandra, The Voyages of Aeneas become academic, philosophical and artistic platforms for creative applications in technological field, in the relation text-sonic-video image and processed image, artistic feed-back study in muti- and intercultural communication, overall idea/ communication/ background impact. By these complex redefinitions, professor Ghezzo acts as a universalization interface designed agent, with n points of intersection west/east , past/future, between human hypostasis, between cultural and musical assets and new technologies providing a harmonious integration model of differences while remaining true to the “village” spirit, that artistic community where music, poetry, dance, and visual arts represent a primary language.
This personal path has been defined in a context marked by the influence of three of the most pronounced American figures of contemporary music: Milton Babbitt, John Cage, Leo Kraft, with whom Dinu Ghezzo had interfered with notable success ( in 1994 he received, among others, an order from Guggenheim Foundation for “Checkmate for John Cage” creation ) and if we think that in 1993 Leo Kraft accompanied him in România at “ The Anniversary of American Music” in Constanţa and took part in first-auditions recording project of American composers performed with “ Black Sea “ Philharmonic, a CD entitled “Tonus Tomis” ( Capstone Records, recording with the Philharmonic in Constanţa ) which had a significant circulation in American and European musical circles.
There are figures each representing, aesthetic paradigms, private connections with European music of the twentieth century, but also with other artistic languages , with mathematics, science and technology. For Cage – a disciple of Arnold Schonberg- music is linked to the idea of chance ( in the probabilistic sense) as a result of sonorous play “ a purposeless play” ( “Experimental Music” Conference supported in 1957 ). His influence is enormous as a professor at CUNY and Princeton, and arguments are not only musical, but also anthropological and philosophical oriented , because Cage a writer as well ( “Silence”-1961, “ A Year from Monday”-1968, “M”-1973, “Empty Words” – 1979, 1983) and a illustrator, developing text’s visual dimension and especially the sound image- choreographic image relation in the long-term collaboration with dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham at Black Mountain College, after 1948. The new paradigm is configured in correspondence with Piere Boulez in Paris, with Robert Samuels and Canadian semitolog J. J. Nattiez through a systematic survey of music nature which he considers to be spiritual, a “ wake-up to real life that goes through silence experience “. 4‘33“ part unleashed at the start of the decade an ever unparalleled scandal, the performer’s 273 seconds of silence in front of the concert piano, being pure appearance, a convention interrupted by press and public’s outrage reactions, first because they paid a ticket to hear music and the press was in need of a ready to be commented “object”; the code breaking of the artistic event represents a sense of time reversal in a civilization of speed, achieving an “ absolute 0” , reversal point of what we understand by this art in western culture.
Milton Babbitt, located at Cage’s opposite pole through total serialization – synonymous with rational control over composing music act and sound result, whereby is dissociated from emotional impact, to compose a music piece becomes a logic matter with n variables-undertaken through “ Three Compositions for Piano” (1947) with 2 years ahead of Oliver Messiaen Modes de valeurs et d‘intesites and five years ahead of Pierre Boulez in The X Polyphony. Babbitt considers contemporary music as a contribution to intellectual rather that art history- “ Contemporary Music Composition and Music Theory as intellectual History” ( 1972 delivered lecture ). His mathematical-composer approach is entirely abstract – marked by Second Viennese School influence, and has a remarkable impact on contemporaries: receives Pulitzer award for the “ scientific and semen distinguished” contribution of his work, is appointed consultant professor at RCA ( Narkill Synthesizer) researcher’s group at Princeton.
Babbitt is considered “the early guru of the electronic music” managing to create in 1959 “Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center”, to develop intellectual and technological dialogue with his distinguished colleagues at Princeton , Harvard, Columbia, Julliard School, incorporating in this dialogue results of collaboration with the poet John Hallander, a professor at Yale, in a notable argument effort “on the univers vs plurivers” ( conference which was presented at Emerson Bicentennial, apud Jason Gross. Perfect Sound Magazine). Babitt and Hollander created the sonic concept which doesn‘t correspond to acoustic parameters nor to audibility but it represents a text dimension “highly, sonically organized”, the sonicity being a meta level of connection and music/poetry analog structuring. If between the two outstanding American contemporary music figures decks are finally cut, Leo Kraft, a student of Nadia Boulanger, formed in that Parisian “ esprit de finesse” , will not only be a personal model for Dinu Ghezzo, but also a steady collaborator in high-impact concert activities in New York, in halls of Broadway, Carneige Hall, Lincon Center, in a strong interest expansion for contemporary music in America 70s-80s, a crucial period for the Romanian-born composer‘s integration in American cultural space coordinates, Leo Kraft plays a decisive role that consists in opening to him a intellectual world and collegial relations dimension of quality that Dinu Ghezzo will appreciate and develop over time as a remarkable source of its own universe, along with his creative group, with choreographer Lisa Naugle, composer and media-artist John Gilbert, the late composer and friend of Romania, Ron Mazurek,with poet, soprano and anthropologist Christine Ghezzo, professor Marta Arkossy-Ghezzo ( daughter and wife both collaborators of professor‘s several meridian projects).
Going back in time we might ask ourselves how did the young 30 years old composer managed to quickly and without any doubt convince these figures about his own worth, having no recommendations from the famous names of composition schools in Europe, if not given to the fact that he spoke a common language of new music and displayed in American concert life different musical skills, originality and entrepreneurial spirit. On the other hand we can reflect on the cultural difference the mobility in the American open society of the ‘80s. Dinu Ghezzo came from Bucharest Conservatory, he was an “emerging composer” , a multiple performer, multilingual (spoke fluently four languages) ever since he was in the country he‘s family with twentieth century music, with the sound and experimental techniques, but on a solid classic base, provided by profound harmony, counterpoint, theory and musical forms, orchestration and ethnomusicology studies ( a significant part of professor Constantin Brailoiu‘s research were published in the early 8th dec. in Lloyd A.L., Problems of ethnomusicology, Cambridge University Press).
Another early recognized quality of Dinu Ghezzo was that of musical life promoter, a “ man in charge”, in other centers in Europe:
Dinu Ghezzo, the man in charge of his forum, has an enthusiasm for the program that will stimulate the musical appetite of anyone who cares at all about what‘s going on in music today… the selection of performers is anything but parochial.., one of the many good ideas of his Forum is to take players and composers from all over ( US, Canada, and Europe)…probably the greatest strength of this kind of series is that avoids the danger of presenting only one musical point of view..” ( The Villager NYC: “ A New Music Fest in the Village” 1983).
First in Los Angeles and then in New York, Dinu Ghezzo managed to become a contact point between the two cultures, being described as „Americcan-Romanian” composer since the very first concert life appearances. ( Los Angeles Time, 1973 ). This identification will become very productive over the years, professor Dinu Ghezzo manifesting himself as one of the most active promoters of romanian music and culture in the US, but what is very significant and at the same time particular, these meeting are conducted in an open plural medium, specific to the American metropolis. We can speak of a complex articulation.. First at the level his own musical, that combines language, electric sounds with heterophonc textures in which brands of romanian space sound identity are recognizable – famous instruments, voices, modal and melodic structures, rhythms- in songs like „ The legend of The Fir Tree”, „ Leru-i Ler”, „ Five Village Scenes”, „ Wind Rituals”, The sunlight poems” ( inspired by Lucian Blaga‚s poetry ), „Doina”. In memoriam, „ December Epitaphs, Rituals of Life, Love and Death” by Lia Lungu and Timişoara Ensemble- but also neighborliness and kinship with a wider cultural background in „ Eastern Rituals”, „ Echoes of Tomis”, „ In Search of Euridice” „ Voyages of Aeneas” having a strong impact on the public and music critics being awarded numerous prizes for composition to the particular combination of traditional sounds with electronic ones. ( „ particulary stiking in its use of a Greek ( Tracian) bagpies, tarogato, rhapsodic guitar and dirty saxophone and its evocation of Hungary, România and Macedonia in improvised electronic contexts” in Twentieth Century Music ‚99 Records”). Another significant aspect is how high class american instrumentalists learn to use romanian popular tools to interpret Dinu Ghezzo‚s songs: for instance, the great american clarinetist Esther Lamneck who sang a balad playing the taragot in „ December Epitaphs” – the creation dedicated to the December 1989 events , first auditioned in New York, then Paris where Dinu Ghezzo is composer in residence at Sorbone and The Bucharest Opera- flutist Wendy Luck, Ron Mazurek-accordion, Tom Beyer-percussion, Jeanann Seidmann- violin, and others, the musical world‚s feedback being so impressive to the sound unevirse created by the composer in concerts and recitals, in contemporary music festivals, in conferences university presentations, during summer courses and master classes, in a vast aria of romanian music and spirituality dissemination having as a boost personal and cultural memory. A second plan is represented by Dinu Ghezzo‚s link and musical ensemble collaboration which he led, with an impressive number of romanian musical and artistic personalities in New York and other american and european musical centers: with the musicians Sherban Lupu, Mirel Iancovici, Lorry Walfisch, Aurel Stroe, Miriam Marbe, Cornel Taranu, Violeta Dinescu, Aurelian Octav Popa, Emil Sein, Andrei Deleanu, Sebastian Danila, Andrei Marinescu, with poets like Ioana Ieronim, Saviana Stanescu, with choreographer Liliana Iorgulescu, with folk singer Lia Lungu and many others. An important dimension was reflection of media projects developed in Romani, starting with 1991, when many top critics and journalists as Dumitru Avakian, Luminiţa Vartolomei, Cristina Sârbu, Oltea Şerban-Pârâu a.o. he favorable revues his contributions as a composer and romanian-american projects and festivals. These chronicles have configured the concepts and innovative events perception frame of the american pattern in post-communist Romania in which contemporary music and Romanian-American relations were an undoubtedly ferment of the opening. Finally, a new intercultural valence is realized today through his students in composition classes, young musicians from the United States, China, South Korea, Japan, who are participating to first audition concerts of their self produced work during classes, which are annually completed in Constanţa in a number of symphonic concerts conducted by professor Dinu Ghezzo, programs that include, since 2006, interartistic and intercultural workshops with students from master programs like Anglo-American Studies and Communication of The Faculty of Letters at Ovidius University of Constanţa. In Aprin 2008 the Romanian Cultural Institute in NY celebrated him through a concert entitled “Dinu Ghezzo : memories and celebrations of 38 years of Romanian-American collaborations”, that involved Tom Beyer, Joseph Church, Robert Rowe, Ron Sadoff ( Academy Award for film music), Wendy Luck, Pedro da Silva, Sebastian Dănilă, Christine Ghezzo, and as special guests Adina Ciugureanu (Ovidius University dean) and the venerable musician Lory Walfisch- Enescu Foundation president in NY – performing Final Movement, Piano Sonata, Op. 24 by George Enescu.
Ghezzo and the West East dialogue
Dear Ana Maria and colleagues: Many thanks for the very in depth look on my musical and artistic life. I am very grateful and very inspired to continue my work. Yes, we need this kind of recognition, but much more, we need to see that what we do is not spent on vain ……
Congratulations for the major effort. Please cont on my support and promotion.
With much gratitude,
DG