Paola Prestini (born 1975)
Paola Prestini was born in Italy, graduated from the Julliard School, and currently resides in Brooklyn. She is much involved with working with children in the arts and cofounded the Brooklyn performance space National Sawdust.
Her 2018 composition From the Bones to the Fossils (for solo cello, loop pedal, and electronics) arose from a commission that involved composers working with scientists, in this case the climate scientist Andrew Kruczkiewicz. Paola Prestini commissioned a paper from him about hurricane patterns in the Caribbean and Cuba in the 1950s, the music of which (as she writes)
is infused in the vocal-like writing for the cello. I then used recorded fog horns, storms, ocean sounds and my own voice to create the electronic tapestry created with Sxip Shirey. I took the idea of currents and their overlap as the departing point for the cello’s lines and loops, landing in culmination at the eye of the storm, then dissolving into Andrew’s ending words, ‘from the bones to the fossils’.
From the Bones to the Fossils is performed here by Paola Prestini’s husband, Jeffrey Zeigler in connection with Bang on a Can:
Following the performance is a discussion with the composer and the Bang on a Can founders.