From Thursday, June 12 to Sunday, June 15, 2025 (from 4 PM to 8 PM), in the Teatrino of Palazzo Ducale, musicians Tobia Poltronieri, Alessandro Cau, and Fabrizio Modonese Palumbo pay tribute to American musician Miles Cooper Seaton, who passed away prematurely in 2021, with the European premiere of the installation-performance “Transient Music #2”.

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This is a site-specific piece, variable depending on the location and the musicians performing it, conceived by Miles Cooper Seaton with the aim of creating a contemplative, charged, and temporary space. The program, developed in collaboration with Southern Bird London, includes an unreleased recording of the concert at Cafe Oto in London and Real Listening Practice, a guided meditation by Cooper Seaton led daily by Eleonora Mazzone.

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PROGRAM

Palazzo Ducale / Teatrino

• June 12–15, morning: Workshop with musicians Tobia Poltronieri and Alessandro Cau, Conservatorio Nicolò Paganini di Genova & Accademia Ligustica di Belle Arti students, musicians and singers (reservation required, more info here)

• June 12–15, from 4 PM to 5 PM: Real Listening Practice, a guided meditation by Cooper Seaton led by Eleonora Mazzone (reservation required, more info here)

• June 12–15, from 5 PM to 8 PM: A sound installation, accessible as an open listening room, that is the result of a workshop led by experimental musician and longtime friend and collaborator of Miles Cooper Seaton, Fabrizio Modonese Palumbo, in collaboration with Emily Moore and Martino Sarolli at the Niccolò Paganini Conservatory in Genoa. (open access, no reservation needed)

• June 15 at 8 PM: Performance with musicians Tobia Poltronieri, Alessandro Cau, Fabrizio Modonese, and workshop participants (open access, no reservation needed)
   

Side events

• Palazzo Ducale exhibition: “Giorgio Griffa. Painting the Invisible”

• June 15 at 9:30 PM: Visual-sound performance-action with Lady Maru and Jacopo Benassi, at Palazzo Bronzo

 

ARTISTS

Miles Cooper Seaton (1979–2021) was an American musician who, in 2003, founded one of the most interesting experiments in the experimental indie rock scene: Akron/Family. His experience with the Akron/Family collective accompanied him until 2013, after which he pursued a prolific solo career that led him to collaborate with numerous historic musicians and groups such as Michael Gira, Keiji Haino, William Parker, Hamid Drake, and Sun Ra Arkestra, as well as with emerging acts such as C+C=MAXIGROSS from Verona, where he lived for extended periods. Throughout his life, musical experimentation also drove him to create sound installations and works closer to electronic music. Blending the transcendent and intuitive qualities of spiritual musical traditions with the visceral, conflicting, and humanist values of punk movements and countercultures, Seaton’s solo performances were expressions of his musical and cultural roots — a mix of composition and improvisation that invited the audience to recognize their own collaborative role. He performed twice in Genoa thanks to his collaboration with Disorder Drama.

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Tobia Poltronieri is a guitarist, singer, and producer based in Cagliari. For over twenty years, he has blended experimentation and improvisation with songwriting, performing regularly with the collective C+C=MAXIGROSS, which he co-founded, and collaborating with artists such as the late Miles Cooper Seaton (Akron/Family), Lino Capra Vaccina (on his first solo album Casa, finalmente), Gabriele Mitelli, Marco Giudici & Adele Altro (Any Other), and Marco Fasolo (Jennifer Gentle). He has released about ten records and played hundreds of concerts, including at international stages like Primavera Sound in Barcelona (with C+C in 2016, the first Italian band in the official lineup), a concert recorded by the BBC (2017) with the Miles Cooper Seaton Trio, a guided performance by Seaton at Cafe Oto in London (2016) with Oliver Coates (Radiohead, Jonny Greenwood) and Lætitia Sadier (Stereolab), a session with the Abstracta Collettive led by Eric Chenaux (2024), and notable opening acts such as IOSONOUNCANE and Paolo Angeli’s theater tour (2018). In addition to performing, he works in artistic production, event curation, workshops, and teaching.

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Alessandro Cau is a drummer/percussionist, experimentalist, improviser, and performer. Since 2010, he has been pursuing his own personal exploration of timbre, involving not only conventional percussion but also everyday objects and recycled materials, expanding and preparing his percussion set. In November 2011, he attended the “Permanent Musical Research” Laboratory led by Stefano Battaglia at Siena Jazz. Over the years, he has played with numerous musicians and musical projects, including Mauro Sigura Quartet, Any Other, Miles Cooper Seaton Trio, Marco Giudici, Sunsweet Blues Revenge, Moti Mo, Snake Platform, Undisco Kidd, and Nick Rivera. He has collaborated with Kid Millions (Oneida), Boredoms, John Drain, Erik Truffaz, Gavino Murgia, Enzo Favata, Marcello Peghin, Salvatore Maiore, Luca Aquino, Javier Girotto, Filippo Vignato, Pasquale Mirra, Dudu Kouate (Art Ensemble of Chicago), Marco Panattoni, Shain Moitia (Ex Models), Diagrams (Sam Genders’ Tunng project), Simon Francis (Ellie Goulding), Geoff Barrow (Portishead), Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth), Sikarnt Skoolisariaporn, Oliver Darling (Imelda May), Tobia Poltronieri, Peter Zummo (Lounge Lizards), Anais Drago, Alfonso Santimone, Francesco di Bella (24 Grana), Marta del Grandi, and Charles Hayward (This Heat, Gong). He has performed in theatres and festivals in Italy, France, Switzerland, Spain, Belgium, Germany, Norway, the UK, Croatia, Montenegro, Turkey, Tunisia, Ethiopia, Serbia, and Japan.

Fabrizio Modonese Palumbo has performed extensively across Europe, the UK, North America, and Canada, and has contributed to over 130 recordings. He has collaborated with numerous artists, including Xiu Xiu, Little Annie, Jochen Arbeit (Einstürzende Neubauten), Jóhann Jóhannsson, Carla Bozulich, Ben Chasny, Miles Cooper Seaton, Teho Teardo, Michael Gira, Baby Dee, the historic English post-punk band Rema-Rema, Simon Fisher Turner, Julia Kent, Enrico Degani, and William Basinski. He is also a founding member of Blind Cave Salamander with Paul Beauchamp, Almagest! alongside Ernesto Tomasini, and the cult band Larsen, with whom he has released 20 albums to date. He composes music for film, theatre, and dance, works as a producer, and leads workshops and lectures on musical semantics, composition, and queer music history. His most recent solo works include Titan Arum, his sixth studio album under the name ( r ), released by the Belgian label Cheap Satanism; ELP (Dissipatio, 2023), a collection of music composed for the choreographic and dance project of the same name by Paola Bianchi; the EP Some Time Spent There in duo with British visual artist and performer John Lee Bird, inspired by Andrew Haigh’s film All of Us Strangers; and the album Sing-A-Beast by his mother Miriam, which he also produced.