Flashforward to the beauty salon (2023)

Written for Ensemble Suono Giallo.

The title of this piece is crucial as it already clearly conveys what it is ultimately about at its core. It aims to be very cinematic and visually evocative by musically capturing the experience of being transported through a “flash-forward”, which carries the listener instantaneously from the middle of one set of events, to a completely different “scene”, similarly to transitions seen in films.

The “flashforward-moment” itself is preceded by a longer, darker and disorienting section that steadily builds tension. This tension finally culminates in the abrupt temporal cut of the flashforward, bringing us to the “Beauty Salon Scene”.
In contrast to the unstable and unsettling nature of the first part, the beauty salon offers a very welcoming, warm and meditative atmosphere, as one would expect. In this section, the piece explicitly plays around with different musical cliches, employing them to provide more reference points for the listener.

However, it is perhaps due to the utilisation of these cliches that, despite evoking a sense of familiarity and providing a much-needed respite after the instability of the preceding section, there is an underlying inauthenticity that prevents this beauty salon from truly feeling genuine.