Romina Daniele

Romina Daniele (born 8 February 1980 in Naples) is an Italian exponent of the vocal extended technique, an avant-garde and blues singer, a composer of electronic and experimental music, vocalist and performer associated with contemporary music, writer, photographer. Since 2005, she has been working on sound research in the fields of vocalism and electronic music, and since 2013 she has been working as blues singer as well.

In 2005 she has been awarded with the Demetrio Stratos International Prize for musical experimentation for the emerging artist best project, proposing the project Diffrazioni Sonore (RDM, 2005–2010). The Career Awards have been received by Diamanda Galás in 2005, Meredith Monk in 2007, Fred Frith in 2008, and Fátima Miranda in 2009.

She has been a finalist at ‘Premio Nazionale delle Arti' (Arts National Award) for Electronic Music and New Technologies, presenting the composition for voice and electronics La Prova, taken from her second record Aisthànomai, il Dramma della Coscienza (RDM, 2008–2010) in 2010 edition, and presenting the electro-acoustic composition La Natura Assente in 2011 edition.

In 2011 she has been awarded with the 'Arci Award' for musical experimentation presenting a preview from her new work titled Spannung. The related concert took place at the big stage area of "Carroponte" (Sesto San Giovanni, Milan) in July 2011. The project has been presented in its different stages during the last performances as well, while detailed information has been given by the artist on the occasion of the 'Arci Award'. Electronika Festival Aterforum Festival – during the meeting with Meredith Monk, 5 Giornate per la Nuova Musica Festival – with which she has been collaborating since 2008, Salone Internazionale del Libro; London Hoxton Festival; Intermidia Festival – Slovakia; gaining attention from the international press as well.

In the middle of 2013, she founded the band with which mainly pays homage to the greatest women of rhythm and blues, "to bring back and bring up that unique and originary strength, passion and pain, today forgotten especially in Europe; that is one thing with my deeper work". The band has been performing since May 2013 all over the Milan area.

As she said, "the Blues is at the center as feeling and intention in a variety of styles that will allow us to cross – within the limits of our ability – the twentieth century, from Swing to Fusion". (Romina Daniele on One TV)

Between electronics and vocal experimentation, live studio session in solo and with the band, extended vocalism and blues, her latest record is a triple cd titled Spannung produced between 2009 and 2015, and released on December the 24th 2015. The book Voce Sola – essay on the vocal discourse to be released in 2016 – has been written during the same years.

Life and works Daniele was born and grown in Naples, where she studied classic dance and classic guitar, and started to write poems, tales, songs, to paint and to photograph since she was a child. In the Nineties she participated to exhibitions and was noted and mentioned by local and national magazines. The poems written between 1995 and 2005 are today part of the collected poems book Poesie 1995–2005, English and Italian bilingual edition (RDM, 2010).

After the studies on Art criticism, aesthetics and Cinema at the University of Naples Suor Orsola Benincasa, and that in vocals with Auli Kokko (singer for Daniele Sepe's band), Daniele focuses herself in musical activity moving to Milan in 2005, where "the climate for experimental singing is more receptive", concerts, and individual lessons as well.

Diffrazioni Sonore, released in 2005 and her first album project, "consists entirely of multi-tracked, and entirely improvised vocal music, some of it treated digitally (radical EQ, echo, and a little reverb), but otherwise left well enough alone",

The second record Aisthànomai, il Dramma della Coscienza, released in 2008, for voice and electronics, is focused on sound research in the fields of vocalism and electronic music, including compositions with texts in Italian, English and French. Consisting of textual philosophizing more abundantly, They both include "theoretical line texts" which look like essays or manifestos; on one hand these essays explain the foundation of Daniele's musical activity, coming mostly from contemporary philosophy, in particular from the French philosophy by Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes and the theoretic-linguistic vision by Pier Paolo Pasolini; on the other hand, as Dionisio Capuano remarks, "her theoretic will can hamper the total fruition".

In the interviews Daniele declares herself to be devoted to "feeding doubt and a whirlpool of feelings, my primarily aim is structuring thought: a human one." In particular: Diffrazioni Sonore is a result of the research I have been conducting since 2000 in a number of areas: voice, composition by electronic means, philosophy applied to multimedia. Studying film history and theory, art criticism and aesthetic analysis, I approached the fields of thought that my research is based on, which include Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy and Michel Chion’s theory applied to film, a multimedia art form. I am referring specifically to the linguistic and morphological foundations of my work, by virtue of the relationship between, and coexistence among, different languages, including voice, poetry, writing, music, electronics, art, thought, man. (Romina Daniele on the Rumpus)

Between 2006 and 2008, during the work on her second record Daniele wrote the essay Ascenseur pour l'échafaud, Il luogo della musica nell'audiovisione (RDM, 2011), in English: the site of music in Audio-Vision, title which reminds to two previous studies, one is the Site of Film by Christian Metz , the other is Audio-Vision by Michel Chion. As a matter of fact, the essay is the dissertation thesis with which Daniele degreed Cum Laude in Cinema Studies, supervised by professor Augusto Sainati from the Sorbonne of Paris, who has been studying the cinema combining the semiotic analysis and the historical and sociological points of view for a long time. Daniele's thesis is focused on the relationship between music and image in the cinema, conducted through the detailed analysis of the French movie Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (1959) by Louis Malle, with soundtrack by Miles Davis. Furthermore, Daniele honours the Davis soundtrack covering the piece Nuit sur les Champs-élysées in the second record.

Between the 2008 and 2011 she dedicated herself to literature production, publishing the books mentioned above and the essay Il dialogo con la materia disintegrata e ricomposta, un'analisi di Thema (Omaggio a Joyce) di Luciano Berio (RDM, 2010). It is an analysis of Thema (Omaggio a Joyce) by Luciano Berio, described as the first electro-acoustic composition in the history of western music made entirely with voice and elaboration of it by technological means. The voice was that of the great American avant-garde singer Cathy Berberian, reading from the Ulysses by James Joyce. Thus, this book is categorized as a biography, and also as an autobiography as can be found in Google Books. On the other hand, Daniele has been working on the essay Voce Sola (Solo Voice) for some years, a book describing her aesthetic and linguistic research in all fields of her activity, mostly focused on music and vocalism.

Although, as Moody remarks, Daniele's work "is not only complex, only demanding, only methodical, but, actually, though it has its challenges, it is also playful, sweet, sometimes funny, and, on occasion, rooted in an appreciation of vernacular music like jazz, blues, and pop."

Between 2009 and 2012 she studies New Technologies and Electronic Music at the Milan Conservatory. And so, as said before, she represented the Conservatorio di Milano at the final stage of ‘Premio Nazionale delle Arti' (Arts National Award) 2010 and 2011 editions. She studied with Riccardo Sinigaglia, Alessandro Melchiorre, Giovanni Cospito; she has attended many workshops and seminars among which we can mention those of Meredith Monk, Trevor Wishart, David Moss and Annette Vande Gorne. RDM Records was born in 2010 through her collaboration, with the purpose of promoting research and the technical and aesthetic autonomy.

The title of her latest record is Spannung, from German: tension, opening of the research. Particularly significant in this work is the cycle of the Dasein, divided in three parts and themes, which is the title of her 2010–2012 performances as well. Dasein, from German as well: being; in Martin Heidegger's philosophy: being the here, to be at stake of one's being into the being itself.

Discography Diffrazioni Sonore (RDM, 884502382761, 2005–2010) Aisthànomai, il Dramma della Coscienza (RDM, 634479662485, 2008–2010) Spannung (RDM, 190394052294, 2015)

Writings Il dialogo con la materia disintegrata e ricomposta, un'analisi di Thema (Omaggio a Joyce) di Luciano Berio (RDM, , 2010) Poesie 1995–2005 (RDM, 9788890490507, 2011) Ascenseur pour l'échafaud, Il luogo della musica nell'audiovisione (RDM, , 2011)