Azusa Onishi, violin
Mizuho Ueyama, viola
Gianluca Pirisi, cello
Flavia Salemme, piano
Ensemble Kinari was founded in 2019 by Azusa Onishi (violin), Mizuho Ueyama (viola), Gianluca Pirisi (cello) and Flavia Salemme (piano).
The Ensemble’s first project concerns the discovery of the chamber repertoire of Sicilian composer Eliodoro Sollima. With the collaboration of Giovanni Sollima, cellist and son of the composer, Ensemble Kinari has selected 6 of the most representative works from the Sicilian composer’s chamber music production.
In 2021, this project of research was crowned by the recording and publication of this musical selection for the Dutch label Brillant Classics.
The disc Eliodoro Sollima – Chamber Music was presented in October 2021 in Palermo at the Teatro Politeama Garibaldi for the Sicilian Association “Amici della Musica di Palermo”.
Kinari, from the Japanese, is a term that describes the coloring of fabric in its most natural, original and pure state. The Ensemble has two years of research behind it, aimed especially at those “places” of music left for different reasons in shady areas: the main purpose of the ensemble is to rediscover them in order to explore them and give them a new color.
Since its establishment, Ensemble Kinari has performed at some of the most important Italian festivals, such as the Unione Musicale in Turin, the “Suoni Riflessi” Festival in Florence, and the “Amici della Musica di Palermo” Music Association.
In 2022 Ensemble Kinari was selected to join Le Dimore del Quartetto’s network.
Gianluca Pirisi plays a Gino Sfarra cello on loan within The String Circle project.
Ph. Eleonora Dottorini
THE ENSEMBLE KINARI RECORDINGS
“The famous Sollima is the cellist Giovanni, while little known is his father, the composer Eliodoro. This interesting recording project by Ensemble Kinari, in which Giovanni also makes a small appearance in the anthology’s concluding miniature, Aria for piano, violin, viola and two cellos from 1945, gives us a glimpse of his music.
Eliodoro Sollima (1926-2000) traversed the Italian music scene of the second half of the twentieth century as a free hitter, avoiding tying his destinies to a precise linguistic co-current.
His language, in fact, constantly oscillates between tonality and atonality. In the Sonata for cello and piano of 1968, for example, one still breathes romantic atmospheres, albeit revitalized by a fresh and highly virtuosic writing especially in a concluding movement in which Gianluca Pirisi and Flavia Salemme show themselves to be technically very fierce. […] Ensemble Kinari’s interpretation of the Three Movements is fiery on the level of rhythm and very intense on the dramatic level, demonstrating the tight-knitness of an ensemble that is technically very prepared but also very pliant in its approach to music, as revealed by the melancholy and dreamy lyricism of the second movement of the Sonata for Cello and Piano and the compactness of the sonic amalgam of the Third Quartet; it is a CD to listen to with interest!”
Luca Segalla, Archi Magazine
Azusa, Mizuho, Gianluca e Flavia
Kinari, from the Japanese, is a term that describes the coloring of a fabric in its most natural, original and pure state. Ensemble Kinari was born with the idea of creating an ever closer union between performance and the exquisitely inherent aspects of musical and artistic research by devoting itself, in particular, to those “places” in music left for different reasons in shady areas: the goal is to rediscover them in order to explore them and give them color.
One of the main characteristics of Ensemble Kinari lies in being a heterogeneous ensemble, not limited to a single chamber formation, but open to the inclusion of new musicians within it precisely in order to be able to meet the instrumental ensemble required by composers included in new projects.
