PIETRUSKO, ROBERT GERARD - Elegiya

"On Elegyia, Robert Gerard Pietrusko reflects on notions of accumulation and decay, calling specifically on his memories of the demise of the Soviet Union. The sudden collapse of the USSR shocked the world and in that moment came an intense and wholesale reveal, that spoke to the impermanence of all political and social structures, no matter how fixed they might appear. Using this as a compositional metaphor, Pietrusko creates an edition of muted sonics, rich saturation and submerged low energies. Mirroring the uncertainties, aspirations and desires of that time, Elegyia reveals a unique acoustic reading of disintegration and the promise of renewal. A beautifully drifting memory-scape richly colored in dense clouds of harmony. From Robert Gerard Pietrusko: "While working on this album, I've often thought about the meaning of the word, elegy. As a poem or a piece of music, it is written for the passing of a person or a way of life. The creation and performance of an elegy, however, is not an experience of this original sorrow but is instead its repetition -- following a similar pattern, though never the same. Similarly, Elegiya is based on five piano motifs that are repeated with constant variation and extrapolation across the album's nine tracks. In structure, harmony, and timbre each piece attempts to capture the contradictory condition of a macro-level stasis versus a tumultuous interior, rigorous movement but no progression, and a threat of its own undoing. Robert Gerard Pietrusko is a designer and composer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His work is part of the permanent collection of the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Paris and has been exhibited in more than 15 countries at venues such as the Museum of Modern Art, Akademie der Künste, Palais de Tokyo, and the Venice Architecture Biennale. Recently, Pietrusko was awarded the 2021 Rome Prize for landscape architecture. He is currently an associate professor at Harvard University, and a visiting faculty member at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture, and Design in Moscow. His last album, Six Microphones, was released on LINE/Counter Audition in 2019." - Room40.