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Laidi Palace & Tallinn Music Week 2024

Of Electronic Forests and Migratory Birds

Fragrant Wood and Artists Lost Between Magic and Reality

The clear spring sky opens over the vast forests of Latvia, where the fragrant birch wood burns in large boilers that warm the Laidi Palace. This is where my adventure begins, lost in the green and far from cities and chaos, where silence is a constant state—except for the cries of cranes arriving at the end of March, intent on spending the warmer months away from the southern regions.This historic residence is now inhabited by artists who have turned it into a sort of commune, each dedicated to their craft: some repurpose glass from bottles abandoned along roadsides to create lamps, furniture, and art pieces; others paint with natural dyes; and Kristaps and I, we devote ourselves to electronic music.Kristaps Pukitis, founder of the record label Dirty Deal Audio, has been researching Ambisonics for years—a focal point of my artistic and professional career. The match is perfect. He is my host for this residency, promoted as part of the professional development program activated by Italian Accordion Culture through ARTIficio SONORO’s ateliers and financed by the Erasmus+ Programme.We spend three days at Laidi Palace—two for rehearsals and one for a concert—before heading to Tallinn, Estonia, for Tallinn Music Week.My concert is scheduled for March 6, 2024, at Laidu Muiža-Pils, featuring music by me, Pier Alfeo, Silvio Lotito, Gabriele Delia, and Davide Chiancone.Upon entering the hall, the instructions to the audience are simple: choose a seat within the Ambisonics dome based solely on sound. To make this possible, a gentle white noise emanates from the speakers—a sound also found in nature, not too different from the rain falling on the oak and pine leaves outside. This white noise delicately fills the space, pleasantly warmed by the large wood-burning stove.I want the focus to be solely on listening, so during the concert, the room remains in complete darkness, almost religious—and perhaps it is, for that one hour and twenty minutes.The two preceding days were dedicated to rehearsals, and if I’ve done everything right, I’ll keep the promise I made to myself at the start: to guide the audience through a new sonic journey. Thanks to the Ambisonics speaker dome, I can manipulate the music within a three-dimensional space surrounding the listeners, immersing them in a starry sky populated by near and distant sounds, like stars and planets to admire through listening.Kristaps and I assembled and calibrated the speaker dome three days earlier. It consists of a wooden structure made of interlocking cylinders, supporting the 32 Genelec speakers Kristaps provided. Placed on the floor at the center of the structure is a subwoofer that handles the lowest frequencies. The technique used to reproduce sound through the speakers is Ambisonics, conceived in the 1970s by the brilliant mathematician Michael Gerzon. It allows audio signals to be managed as true spherical harmonics—components of a single sphere of sound. The electroacoustic repertoire for the concert includes works by the aforementioned authors.Before starting the concert, I have the chance to greet the audience, trying to remember their names, which, due to the Latvian language, are complex to memorize. I am pleasantly surprised by the audience's diverse ages: children, young people, families, and some with gray hair. I like to believe that electroacoustic music is also a universal language, but I wonder how they’ll react to an experience so different from typical listening. Will the music reach them?The concert is a success: I feel like the captain of a ship docking at a new and marvelous continent after navigating calm and sometimes stormy waters. Amidst the final applause, a comment from a man in his fifties makes me feel like a rock star: looking me in the eyes and raising his fists in a rock’n’roll gesture, he shouts, “Louder!” Shortly after, a woman smiles at me and says, “Boy, you have a future.” A double compliment at thirty-seven. I marvel at having created a connection with the audience without compromising on a complex musical language like electroacoustic music, too often confined to academic contexts.In the following days, we move to Tallinn, where Kristaps and his team set up an Ambisonics dome for the Üle Heli Kristallofoonia event at Tallinn Music Week.During the car journey through the dense forests of Latvia and Estonia, Kristaps and I talk extensively about music and ideas. For years, he has been promoting Ambisonics research and dissemination through concerts, festivals, and collaborations with universities and institutions. His plans for the coming years include continuing to support students and artists by offering artistic residencies focused on these themes. Both of us are eager to build a long and productive collaboration.The two electroacoustic music events at Tallinn Music Week feature dozens of composers from across Europe, including Platon Buravicky, Sofia Zaiceva, Aivar Tõnso, Otto Ivari, and Hans Gunter Lock, the evening’s director.Yet, the atmosphere feels different. I miss the intimacy of the Laidi Palace concert—not because the venue is larger and perhaps more dispersive, but because I feel the absence of the composer-audience connection I sought so much during my Laidi performance.I observe a focus on showcasing Ambisonics' technical potential in a sterile virtuosity that expresses only itself, neglecting an experiential approach to music. What’s missing is the sublime relationship between technique and expression, which I consider fundamental in music and art. Ambisonics enriches us with a powerful tool for immersive sound management, thanks to numerous speakers arranged geometrically and managed with Michael Gerzon’s brilliant mathematics. But why desire a more powerful tool purely for technical advantage if it does not serve the music? Do we really need so many speakers just to spin sounds around the audience’s heads like a carousel or special effect?Or should the composer use them to explore expressive channels enriched by technical potential instead of being confined within it?I return home after this artistic residency enriched with new energy and deeper motivation as I navigate between wonder and doubt, preparing for future experiences, aware that I now have a broader vision of the sea ahead of me.I thank the Italian Accordion Culture Association and ARTIficio SONORO for the opportunity offered, the Erasmus+ EcVet program, all the artists at Laidi Palace, and Kristaps Pukitis for hosting me so warmly. ❣️by Alessio Mastrorillooriginal piece on Strumenti & Musica

With Platon Buravicky, Sofia Zaiceva, Aivar Tõnso, Otto Ivari, Hans Gunter Lock and Kristaps Pukitis @ Tallinn Music Week 2024

Rehearsal time in Laidi Palace - setting up the Ambisonic sound system

Lines of code, waves of sound: pieces of a journey

Tallinn 2025

The last glitch in the code finally seems to be fixed, and the system comes to life at last. After several long days of testing and debugging—accompanied by a healthy dose of entirely justified anxiety—the moment feels truly cathartic. I press the space bar, and from the many speakers emerges a new sound: an unknown world, distant and ready to be explored. It sparks in me and Pier (Pier Alfeo, sound artist and the other half of the project) a reaction of wonder and excitement... with just a hint of that healthy dissatisfaction that drives the most curious and courageous minds. The machine has started, at last. Now we have to learn how to drive it.

Morocco 2022

I climb the sand dunes, reverberating with the fierce Moroccan sun, as I explore a new and fascinating land and mentally prepare to present my project at the AIA a few days later. The Italian Acoustical Association, for its National Conference celebrating 50 years of activity, selected my project among many others—a project dedicated to Ambisonics. In this paper, I present an open-source technical implementation that offers musicians, sound engineers, and producers an additional tool for working with spatial audio. And what better place to prepare both mind and spirit for such a significant event, than the waves of the Pacific Ocean just waiting to be surfed, on the sunny shores of Taghazout?

Bari 2021

There are very few memories I hold fondly from the Covid-19 pandemic. In fact, just two: the afternoons spent playing music with my father (a bluesman at heart), between one full-immersion study session and another, and my inspiring teachers at the Bari Conservatory. There I was finishing my studies at the time and, among many wonderful discoveries, one stood out above all: Ambisonics. A technical matter, yes—but for me, an unparalleled listening and musical experience. It took me years to truly hear what my instinct had been whispering to me from the very beginning: this idea is brilliant, and it’s still an open frontier waiting to be explored. So be it!

New York City 2023

At the end of my presentation at the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival 2023, someone asks me a few questions during the Q&A: it’s Michael Gogins, one of the fathers of CSound and a pioneer of Computer Music. That moment sparked a dialogue from which I learned a great deal. There, I presented a new work focused on Ambisonics, deepening the connection with the research shared alongside the California-based Envelop Sound community. I had recently published the source code for an audio plugin with them.

~ Many paths now seem to be converging toward a new and uncharted direction.

My first experience in Tallinn in 2024, which I mentioned earlier (in Laidi Palace & Tallinn Music Week 2024), and this second one in 2025 mark two important milestones along my journey. I’m grateful for the opportunity to continue this research, which I hope can, in some way, inspire my students—now that I’m on the other side of the classroom—and anyone who wishes to explore the world of electroacoustic music in Ambisonics listening systems, immersive and spatial by nature.

Isn’t this, after all, what we’re looking for every time we press play? To feel a new world come alive around us—and within us?

~ Surf and music: unworldly waves ~

When I’m paddling out, there's a rhythm in the water that feels like a low-frequency beat beneath my chest. When I play or hear music, it’s like catching a wave—unpredictable, alive, bigger than me. Both ask for the same thing: presence, surrender, flow. They remind me that I’m part of something in motion, something that doesn’t need to be controlled—only ridden, only felt. Surf and music aren't just passions—they’re how I return to myself.

Where seafoam breathes

and time forgets,
the surfer listens.
Not to the roar,

but the rhythm:
a pulse older than language.

The ocean plays

without apology,
its chords are tides,

its melodies of wind over water.

Each wave a verse,
and the board

a needle on a living vinyl.

Like in a jazz record,
improvisation on an ever-shifting staff.

Some say God hides in vibrations.

Not just sound,

but the thread that ties water to wind,

body to wave,

soul to song.

Not just a metaphor, but dense matter.

The hum beneath all things.

~ This "Flamingo Surf Club Trani" playlist on Spotify is a collection of music that carries me into the spirit of the waves, and into silent kinship with those who share the lineup.

~ Surf and music: unworldly waves ~

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