Andrea Bazzicalupo — Living the questions (Music for simple environment settings)

What is music? How do we conceive of sound? What does it mean to play — and is it possible to consider not playing while playing?

These questions form the point of departure for Living the questions (Music for simple environment settings), a solo work for guitar by Andrea Bazzicalupo. Rather than seeking definitive answers, Bazzicalupo approaches them through gestures, examining the assumptions that shape our understanding of musical activity, composition, and sound.

One question remains unresolved: to what extent has playing been defined, consciously or otherwise, by hierarchies of value established over centuries? Why have certain gestures, sounds, and ways of making music been privileged over others? The work does not propose a theory so much as pursue an inquiry, allowing its direction to emerge through the act of playing itself.

The music takes shape through compositional processes, extended sound structures, and carefully considered improvisational frameworks. Acoustic and electric guitar, simple preparations, and everyday objects become means of investigation. No electronics are used. The material is approached with an economy of means, attending to the sonic possibilities contained within each gesture and to the uncertain boundary between intentional action and its apparent absence.

Recorded with an emphasis on warmth, proximity, and spatial presence, the album gives particular attention to the sound of the instrument in relation to the room around it. The surrounding space is not merely a setting for the music, but part of its audible character.

Bazzicalupo’s approach reflects a longstanding engagement with the guitar as a generator of sound, rather than an instrument confined to a particular idiom. Active in creative music, improvisation, and contemporary music since 2005, he draws on a background rooted in alternative rock, blues, grunge, and the diverse traditions of Black American music. Largely self-taught, his practice moves between composition and improvisation, acoustic and electric sound, and an open-ended vocabulary of techniques, gestures, and preparations.

Born in Italy and now based in the Lille metropolitan area in northern France, Bazzicalupo continues to work across experimental music, sound art, and collaborative practices. Improvisation remains central to his work, understood not simply as a performance method, but as a way of investigating sound and discovering possibilities that cannot be entirely anticipated.

Living the questions brings this ongoing investigation into a particularly reduced setting. Between sound and silence, action and restraint, the familiar and the unexpected, the music leaves room for uncertainty — and for listening without predetermined expectations.

Is it music, then?

ANDREA BAZZICALUPO
Living the questions (Music for simple environment settings)

Andrea Bazzicalupo: guitar, preparations
Recorded on December 5, 2025 by Peter Orins at EMMD Lomme, Lille (FR)
Mixed & Mastered by Peter Orins in Roubaix (FR)

Cover painting by MiHee Kim Magee
Graphic design by Mark Smith

Special thanks to Roberta Battaglia, Peter Orins & Michele Anelli
This album is dedicated to Vincent Heurtebize, with infinite love

TRACKS:

1. Setting I (acoustic) 4:35
2. Setting II (amp) 8:06
3. Setting III (acoustic) 6:37
4. to play or to learn how to play? 6:52
5. Setting IV (acoustic) 3:25
6. Setting V (amp) 4:36

100% of profit from the sale of most of these albums
goes to the musicians