Roberto Negro – Pärt & Songs

Pärt & Songs was born from this insight: what seems fragile can contain something immense; the points of friction between materials, forms, and memories are fertile. In the hands of Italian composer and pianist Roberto Negro, Arvo Pärt’s piano works become a source, an underground current.

Arvo Pärt is one of the most significant figures in contemporary music and holds a unique position in the global music world. His career, marked by profound aesthetic ruptures, has transformed the way we listen to sound, time, and silence by opening a musical space grounded in resonance, simplicity, and essentials.

In Pärt & Songs, Pärt’s oeuvre becomes a resonant space where new compositional approaches emerge. Roberto Negro approaches the work with a sensitive and personal touch: “There is something incomparably true in Arvo Pärt’s music. Something crystal clear. A combination of calm, silence, strength, and contrast.” Negro adds: “I am searching for continuity, for breath. I am looking for a way in which music can transform its shape seamlessly.”

Roberto Negro’s career is defined by a unique blend of contemporary music and improvisation, from piano solo to large ensembles. His music carries a narrative and visual dimension, supported by a poetic quality in which his Italian heritage subtly appears. This award-winning visionary has established himself as one of the most original and active musicians in French jazz. Negro’s collaborations with saxophonist Emile Parisien have taken him on tour across Europe in various ensembles, including Les Métanuits, an adaptation for saxophone and piano of György Ligeti’s first string quartet. Among his long-term collaborators are also violinist Théo Ceccaldi and drummer Michele Rabbia. In 2023, the renowned Ensemble Intercontemporain premiered his work Newborn. Negro, classically trained, born in Turin and raised in Kinshasa, Congo, studied jazz in France, first in Chambéry and then in Paris.

Photo: Jean-Pascal Retel

Tour support: AJC, Spedidam
In collaboration with: Helsinki Jazz & Vapaat äänet

The concert is supported by City of Helsinki and Svenska Kulturfonden.