When I was asked to create a sound work on Parco delle Cascine, the first words I wrote in my notebook were: “walk” and “journey”.
Walking as an activity from which to start to collect material, to acoustically explore the life of the park. But even more walking as an activity chosen to imagine, to create the right dimension to think and meditate.

The title Promenade is therefore both a creative philosophical principle and a method of investigation. Investigating the Park through the “selective ear” of an environmental microphone by taking “recorded walks” to create my own internal map, to make audible what is difficult to frame in the domain of the visible. And after getting lost in the sounds of the Arno river and the fountains, in the reverberation of the small pyramid and also in the forgotten spaces of the Park, my attention was captured by the words and voices that cross it every day.
I went from pure field recording to documentary. I talked to the groups of elderly people who live on the benches and who stroll slowly, to the various communities that live in the park. I randomly recorded and stole the voice of the market and the rides, I collected other important pieces to work with. At the end of each residency day, I listened to the material again and eagerly immersed myself in the creative phase of selection/manipulation and musical creation.

The work that slowly took shape is a journey that ranges from the sounds of the place to the music it suggested to me (you will find pieces of “concrete” music such as preludes for solo piano), to even extreme manipulation of the recordings themselves, to documentary in which the voices are the protagonists”.

– Valerio Vigliar

Valerio Vigliar is a com­poser, pianist, singer, sound de­signer and producer.
He has been practicing piano and voice since he was six years old. Orchestration, counterpoint, melody and improvisation have always been his main passions.
For some years since 2002 he worked with the Tda – Teatro delle Apparizioni – de­vel­op­ing his research in­ter­est in the spatial dimension of sound, as well as in pos­si­blle con­nec­tions be­tween elec­tronic and acoustic sounds.
In 2004, together with the poet and editor Michael Reynolds, created the band Liù, a project dealing with songs, spoken word, jazz rock and trip-hop. In 2005 started his contribution to cinema as a composer of music for films, working with several directors – the graphic novelist Gipi, Francesca Comencini, Alessandro Rossetto, Agostino Ferrente, Jacopo Quadri, Claudio Noce, Jacopo De Bartoldi, Nicola Bellucci, Stefano Sardo, Davide Minnella, Giacomo Durzi.
Since 2013 he has taken part in the artistic research carried out by the Collettivo Angelo Mai and the Bluemotion theatre company.
In 2016 he was commissioned by the”Associazione Ubu per Franco Quadri” to compose a song on the occasion of the prestigious theatre award Premio Ubu, to be given as a vinyl record only to the award winners of each category.
Over the years he has worked with Italian and international film production companies such as Fandango, Indigo Film, Palomar, Rai Cinema, Istituto Luce, HBO and Netflix, and with the most important Italian theatres such as Teatro Nazionale di Genova, ERT Emilia Romagna Teatro, Teatro di Rome, T.P.E Fondazione Teatro Piemonte Europa, La Biennale Teatro di Venezia.

in collaboration with DAGRI – Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Agrarie, Alimentari, Ambientali e Forestali, Università degli Studi Firenze