L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 28 L'Italo-Americano stillness with dynamic auditory performance. By manipulating shutter speeds up to 10,000 times per second in post-production, Nacci achieves the impossible: capturing micro-movements invisible to the naked eye. The hyper-fast vibrations of a harp string, the mechanical flutter of a drum hi-hat, or the precise placement of a vocalist's lips are frozen in time, revealing abstract geometric landscapes. "Here, the idea is to tell you about musical instruments as well as abstract worlds," Nacci explains. "To go in search of the morphology, of the shape, of the geometry. In addition to music, there is the aesthetic aspect of the instrument". One of the most striking s t y l i s t i c c h o i c e s i n t h e FRAMES exhibition is its near- total reliance on black-and- white imagery. Across twenty- one distinct video productions, only two feature color. Nacci explains this deliberate artistic dichotomy: all contents within the core exhibition are per- formed on acoustic instru- ments. "In my opinion, jazz has music in black and white, and I thought of creating this distinc- I t a l o A m e r i c a n o i n S e p t e m b e r , v i s i t o r s a r e immediately struck by the rig- orous formal consistency of the works. Every piece is presented in a uniform 16:9 cinematic ratio, scaled to 160x90, honor- ing the foundational propor- tions of film projection. Yet, what appears to be a tradition- al photograph is, in fact, some- thing entirely different. Operating at standard film speeds of 25 frames per sec- ond, Nacci's video recordings generate roughly 250 thousand potential individual frames over the course of a three-hour s h o o t . F r o m t h i s m a s s i v e archive, Nacci selects specific frames to be printed on canvas, treating them as cutouts from a cinematic screen. True to the exclusivity of fine art, each selected frame is printed only once, ensuring that every can- vas in the gallery is a complete- ly unique work. To bridge the gap between canvas and sound, e v e r y p h y s i c a l w o r k i n t h e exhibition is accompanied by a colophon featuring a QR code. By scanning the code, viewers can instantly access the under- lying video work on their per- sonal devices, bridging visual tion between acoustic instru- ments and electronic instru- ments," Nacci reflects. Color is reserved exclusively for works involving electronic elements or LED-illuminated gear, such as pieces featuring electric vio- l i n a n d e l e c t r o n i c s . F o r acoustic instruments, nothing artificial lights up, only the raw, unfiltered emotion and corporeality of the musician. T h i s p h i l o s o p h y a l i g n s closely with broader evalua- tions of Nacci's work. Andrea Cancellato, director of the ADI D e s i g n M u s e u m i n M i l a n , observed in the exhibition's f i n a l r o o m t h a t N a c c i ' s approach represents a "new frontier of design, in which the matrix is made of light". By r e m o v i n g d i s t r a c t i o n s a n d focusing on the geometry of the instrument, Nacci transforms objects like the neck of a guitar, the bell of a soprano saxo- p h o n e , o r t h e p i s t o n s o f a t r u m p e t i n t o a r c h i t e c t u r a l sculptures. Though the project has achieved monumental suc- cess and traveled to prestigious cultural hubs, Nacci views the F R A M E S e x h i b i t i o n a s a moment of passage rather than a final destination. Always eager to work on complex artis- tic projects, Nacci is already deep in development on his next major venture: an ambi- tious, sixty-minute documen- tary centered on Ivan Fedele, w i d e l y r e g a r d e d a s o n e o f Italy's most important contem- porary composers. Featuring complex musical scores and multi-track audio recordings of c e l l o s , p e r c u s s i o n s , v i b r a - phones, flutes, and clarinets, the upcoming project will func- tion as multiple Body & Sound chapters unified under a single cinematic umbrella. For Bay Area audiences, FRAMES offers a rare opportu- nity to witness music through the eyes and soul of a crafts- man. It reminds us that behind e v e r y n o t e l i e s a p h y s i c a l human journey, an interaction between breath, gesture, and light. FRAMES is on display at t h e M u s e o I t a l o A m e r i c a n o i n S a n Francisco until February 2 8 , 2 0 2 7 . M o r e i n f o a t https://sfmuseo.org/ is dynamically shifted to match the emotional crests and val- leys of the music", he shares. The production process is pretty rigorous: while a fin- ished short film may run any- where from four to ten min- utes, a single five-minute piece c a n r e q u i r e t w o t o t h r e e months of painstaking work. Cellist Alessandra Donenugli famously recorded a nine- minute sonata continuously for three days, performing it 20 to 30 times a day as Nacci adjust- ed the studio lighting to cap- ture every nuance. "For more than 30 years, I have blown on the saxophone, now I blow in the tassel machine," Nacci tells with a laugh. "I continue to be a jazz player. I do jazz". Most musicians he works with fre- quently praise this insider per- s p e c t i v e . A s N a c c i s h a r e s , artists often tell him: "With you as a director, we feel at ease because, first of all, you are a musician". In this context, FRAMES was born as an artistic project with the large format printing of still images taken from the m u s i c a l f i l m s . W a l k i n g through the exhibition, which o p e n e d a t t h e M u s e o F or more than three decades, he spent his life immersed i n t o m u s i c . A s a tenor and contra- bass saxophonist performing across the jazz circuit from the late '70s to the 2000s, he lived the energy of live performance. Alberto Nacci was born in Trapani, the coastal city on the western tip of Sicily, before he moved to Bergamo, the historic town close to the foothills of the Alps. He spent a lifetime mapping the intersection of c u l t u r e , a r t , a n d h u m a n expression. When he laid down his instrument in 2009, his artistic journey was not over, though. Leveraging a diverse career that has included run- ning AJPstudios, his own pro- duction company specializing in art and cultural documen- taries, Nacci started to collabo- rate with painters, sculptors, photogr apher s, ar chitects, choreographers, actors, and poets. The result of this evolution is Body & Sound - Music Meets Image, an internation- ally acclaimed series that won one hundred and ten global awards, including at film festi- vals from Hollywood to Osaka and Alaska. Featuring promi- nent international and Italian jazz and classical figures, the series invites viewers to experi- ence music not only through their ears, but also through shape, light, and geometry. Nacci's unique artistic talent comes from his family. "I am the son of a photographer, to me the image is sound," Nacci reflects, "The image contains the sound". However, he want- ed to go beyond the conven- tional boundaries of documen- tation to inspect the relation- ship between a musician and their instrument, the concept at the core of Body & Sound, which launched in 2014 follow- ing the appreciation for a duo featuring contrabass and voice, vocalist Gabriela Mazza, whose striking profile serves as the cover face of the exhibition. To achieve this, Nacci approaches filmmaking with the discipline of a composer and the eye of a sculptor. Each piece begins with audio recordings pro- duced in collaboration with a specialized sound technician. Nacci then studies the musical score down to the smallest detail, drafting a script and the timeline. "When musicians arrive at the studio, they per- form to a carefully choreo- graphed staging where lighting Sound and light: inside Alberto Nacci's FRAMES exhibition at the Museo Italo Americano RITA CIPALLA SAN FRANCISCO ITALIAN COMMUNITY Director Nacci during the opening of FRAMES in San Francisco (Photo courtesy of Alberto Nacci)

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