The ceremony is introduced by the video:
My father, my job, my life (to Duilio, my father)
Directed by: Mauro Sambo
Venice, spring 2000, 14’15”
“A video camera attached to the blade of a gondola oar, the ‘vertigo’ of going in and out of the water, the sound of that gesture, the route my father took with tourists.
The video is ‘just’ that.
A tribute to my father, to his sweat and hard work, but also to the everyday beauty that surrounded him.”
Musicafoscari is a project initiated by Professor Daniele Goldoni in 2010 that has continued over time in the form of workshops, festivals (JazzFest), and various music series. A key part of the project is a permanent workshop aimed primarily at students from all academic paths, as well as recent graduates or Ph.D. candidates, to help foster a sense of belonging to the university; it also includes participants from the “B. Marcello” Conservatory. The workshop’s purpose is to invite participants to explore musical materials—either through instruments or voice—that feel most personal to them and to do so through learning and practicing free collective improvisation. By experimenting with these means, much as one does with language and conversation, they create something none of them could produce alone. This becomes an example of a communal experience—both aesthetic and ethical—made possible at our university.
Today, the experience of improvisation as a deliberate, disciplined practice is widely studied not only in music and the arts. Recent publications show a cross-disciplinary interest, from psychology to teaching methods to management (see, for example: G. Lewis & B. Piekut (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies, vols. 1 and 2, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016; A. Bertinetto & M. Ruta (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Improvisation in the Arts, New York: Routledge, 2022, presented by Musicafoscari at the B. Marcello Conservatory on December 6, 2022).
To broaden understanding of these practices and languages—while giving back to Venice for the hospitality it offers the university—seminars and free public concerts have been organized in collaboration with leading figures in contemporary improvisation and composition, sometimes in partnership with other institutions. Workshops and concerts have featured internationally and nationally renowned musicians such as Uri Caine, Pauline Oliveros, Evan Parker, George Lewis, Ned Rothenberg, Amir El Saffar, Steve Lehman, Giancarlo Schiaffini, Fabrizio Ottaviucci, Daniele Roccato, Michele Rabbia, and Roberto Dani.
A collaboration was also established with the conservatories of Venice and Rome. Between 2021 and 2024, an agreement with the “Santa Cecilia” Conservatory in Rome led to a joint event in spring 2022 and a newly created musical interpretation of Calvino’s Invisible Cities in Venice on December 1 and at Santa Cecilia on December 21, 2024. Collaborative performances have also taken place with Ca’ Foscari’s Choir and Orchestra, such as “La Voce” (December 15, 2018), “Contemplazioni, Proverbio, Insegnamento” (December 14, 2019, featuring a performance of The Great Learning – Paragraph Seven by Cornelius Cardew), and “La terra vista dal cielo” (November 13, 2022).
In this project, music is approached not only as an autonomous art form but also as a field for transdisciplinary aesthetic reflection—demonstrated explicitly in November 2015 with “Languages,” in December 2018 with a focus on “voice” in its relationship to the body (featuring Giorgio Agamben), and in December 2019 and May 2023 at Treviso’s “Bailo” Art Museum, with a theoretical (Professor Nico Stringa) and musical (with Massimo Menotti, Daniele Goldoni, and Eugenio Cereser at the piano) interpretation of Arturo Martini’s image-only book Contemplazioni (1918).
The project also includes opportunities for university students to try out improvisation in other disciplines (theater, film, visual arts, etc.). High-quality recordings of the concerts have been produced, both for internal and external promotion (for instance, in past broadcasts like Rai 3 “Battiti”). By communicating information about concerts, public lectures, and the Musicafoscari Ensemble’s performances at official events, we hope to offer both society and the city that hosts us an image of Ca’ Foscari as a place committed to democratic participation, cooperation, and cultural as well as social engagement.
Directed by Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline, 1922
A young man in Los Angeles wants to marry a girl who refuses to accept his proposal until he becomes a successful businessman. This is how Poliziotti—also known as Cops, by Buster Keaton—begins. A short film just over 18 minutes long, it bears the director’s trademark comedic flair, chronicling the story of a humble man overwhelmed by a misunderstanding.
Because of a series of innocent confusions (though not in the eyes of the law), the protagonist ends up being chased by the entire Los Angeles police department, resulting in a hilarious pursuit full of twists that culminates in a tragicomic finale.
