New Omni Foundation Video Featuring SoloDuo

Our friends, the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts, in partnership with D'Addario, released a new video. SoloDuo (Lorenzo Micheli and Matteo Mela) performs “River Fragments” from Stephen Goss's upcoming album ‘Landscape and Memory’ written for two guitars. This video was filmed on location in an abandoned villa in Italy as part of Omni's on-location series, Concerts from Historic Sites.

'River Fragments' was commissioned by SoloDuo (Lorenzo Micheli and Matteo Mela). The premiere took place on 11th September 2021 at the Auditorium Pollini, Padua, Italy, as part of the International Guitar Festival “Homenaje”.

‘River Fragments’ offers three scenes along the river Rhine: a waterfall, a patch of calm water, and a riverside castle. In fact, each scene is viewed through the lens of the visual arts. ‘Waterfalls’ alludes to J.M.W. Turner’s several depictions of the cascading waters at Schaffhausen, with their turbulent play of water, rocks, and light.

‘Deep River’ recalls Andras Gursky’s 1999 ‘Rhein II’, a photograph of the Rhine at its most static and peaceful. The third movement, ‘Castle in the Air’, transports us to the world of the romantic castles that decorate the Rhine. Goss was particularly drawn to the Stolzenfels Castle at Koblenz, a Gothic revival fantasy that reminded him of those Escher paintings that depict an impossible labyrinth of near-identical turrets and staircases that go nowhere. The music, based on an elaborate design of falling thirds, goes round in circles, never quite repeating.