Giulia Mazzoni's 'Veloluce' Revives Musical Futurism with Prepared Piano

Italian pianist and composer Giulia Mazzoni (born 1989 in Prato) has released 'Veloluce', a new piano piece paying homage to Futurism. The work, published a year after her album 'YAS – Your Anima System', uses a prepared piano with cables, pencils, and erasers fixed on the strings to create metallic, digital-sounding yet fully analog tones. Mazzoni, the first woman to perform as both executant and composer at the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, draws inspiration from Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's phrase 'Veloluce!' and reflects on the tension between technological progress and humanity. The piece contrasts warm piano sounds with metallic vibrations to symbolize the dialogue between innovation and solitude. The music video by Samuele Alfani merges Futurist dynamism with human introspection. Mazzoni participated in the exhibition 'Il Tempo del Futurismo' at the Galleria Nazionale di Arte Moderna in Rome, where she discussed figures like Gramsci, who admired Futurist music, and Debussy, who dismissed it as 'lunatiques' and 'bruitistes'. She identifies as a Futurist, emphasizing no boundaries between arts and the importance of every sound. She cites influences from Luigi Russolo's Intonarumori, Leo Ornstein's improvisation, John Cage's 4'33'', and Luciano Berio's electronic compositions.