This record stems from the profound human encounter between the young composer Vieri Mura and the elderly Gallurese cantadora Maria Teresa Pirrigheddu.
Maria Teresa Pirrigheddu is an iconic voice of cantu a chiterra, a singing tradition of northern Sardinia. Considered one of the island’s greatest interpreters, in her youth she was gifted with an extraordinarily graceful and elegant phrasing. Today, over eighty years old, she still sings with the same voice, now marked by age and enriched with new shades, as if under the light of another season.
After meeting her during one of his journeys to study traditional Sardinian music, Vieri never stopped visiting Maria Teresa. Letting the music emerge naturally from the everyday silence of her countryside home, while helping her knead sweet ravioli galluresi, or pick the highest figs from her garden tree, a familial bond grew between them (Maria Teresa was born in 1942, the same year as Efisietta, Vieri’s grandmother from the other end of the island), a relationship in which singing often marked the rhythm of daily life. Over the years, Vieri returned regularly to spend time with her, listening to her orally transmitted melodies and layering on them subtle, almost whispered compositions.
Swallows (Rundinas) appear throughout the record as a recurring image: a symbol of passing seasons and fleeting youth. Against this backdrop, Maria Teresa’s singing, once agile and vigorous and now more veiled and fragile with age, seems to impart new layers of meaning to the same words, giving even the familiar cantos a completely renewed significance.
This record stems from the profound human encounter between the young composer Vieri Mura and the elderly Gallurese cantadora Maria Teresa Pirrigheddu.
Maria Teresa Pirrigheddu is an iconic voice of cantu a chiterra, a singing tradition of northern Sardinia. Considered one of the island’s greatest interpreters, in her youth she was gifted with an extraordinarily graceful and elegant phrasing. Today, over eighty years old, she still sings with the same voice, now marked by age and enriched with new shades, as if under the light of another season.
After meeting her during one of his journeys to study traditional Sardinian music, Vieri never stopped visiting Maria Teresa. Letting the music emerge naturally from the everyday silence of her countryside home, while helping her knead sweet ravioli galluresi, or pick the highest figs from her garden tree, a familial bond grew between them (Maria Teresa was born in 1942, the same year as Efisietta, Vieri’s grandmother from the other end of the island), a relationship in which singing often marked the rhythm of daily life. Over the years, Vieri returned regularly to spend time with her, listening to her orally transmitted melodies and layering on them subtle, almost whispered compositions.
Swallows (Rundinas) appear throughout the record as a recurring image: a symbol of passing seasons and fleeting youth. Against this backdrop, Maria Teresa’s singing, once agile and vigorous and now more veiled and fragile with age, seems to impart new layers of meaning to the same words, giving even the familiar cantos a completely renewed significance.
