Child of Tree/Branches is freely inspired by the suggestive work composed by John Cage in 1975, which was joined a year later by another composition for plant-based instruments. The pieces are a playful, sociological and environmental examination of the importance of the relationship between the sounds produced by the environment and the organic nature, without artificial instruments, of music. The project is in two parts. The first consists of a workshop in which the children will be lead on a journey to discover the sounds of plants and will recover the “instruments” most suited to musical manipulation in a park in the city. In the second part, they will play an active role in a performance that will lead to the creation of two magnificent works, using all the materials discovered and recovered during the workshop.

Gianluca Ruggeri is a performer, percussionist, conductor, composer and educator. He has focused his work on contemporary solo and chamber music, concentrating on electro-acoustic research and “performance”. Since 2003 he has been the conductor of the “Ready-Made Ensemble”, a vocal and instrumental group with which he performs a repertoire of original re-reading of compositions both ancient and contemporary. he has also composed a number of works for small ensembles and for soloists and has also written stage music for poetry and theatrical performances. He is a professor of Percussion Instruments at the “S. Cecilia” Conservatory in Rome.

The performance, from the programme Ogni volta unica la fine del mondo, is part of Alleanze multispecie, which studies collective forms of examining our position in the world, posing the question of whether the ideas that take form as we interact in symbiosis with other species can generate a hybrid aspect capable of repairing the fracture between Nature and Culture that has characterised the Anthropocene.