Selected Reviews
The Indian press about her dhrupad music
"Her performance is so amazing that I would like to believe that Signora Cuni is a reincarnated pandita from a bygone age," says Kamalakar Sontakke, chief executive of the Nehru Centre.
— Times of India, Bombay, 1 February 1995
"…remarkable for her chaste diction and her delicate handling of the poetry in the complex rhythmic patterns which dominate Dhrupad singing. Her command over the Gamak techniques is astounding. She won wholehearted applause for some very complex Tihayis…"
— Maharashtra Times, Bombay, 19 February 1995
"…Amelia is perhaps the first foreign vocalist to have ventured on the performing platform in this city… In point of both manner and matter, she gave unimpeachable evidence of long and arduous shagirdi (studentship) with some of our acknowledged dhrupadiyas… excellent use of meends and tihayis and a variety of rhythmic bols… the raga visualization was streamlined and accurate…"
— Mohan Nadkarni, Times of India, Bombay, 17 March 1994
UK tour with Terry Riley and Sounds Bazaar
"…Amelia Cuni's own Danza d'Amore is a beguiling marriage of medieval Italian poetry with mystic Indian traditions, given in tandem with the premiere of her Venga alla Danza. This is 'crossover' at its most fruitful, in which irregular dance rhythms come tumbling out against the nasal yet dusky singing of the Italian-born Cuni, whose voice makes a good case for reincarnation."
— John Allison, The Times, 15 October 1999
"…Even more striking — indeed, for me, the most remarkable work in the programme — was Amelia Cuni's performance of her own Danza d'Amore… Since its spiritual content is so very close to Indian mysticism, Cuni has here truly created a musical bridge between East and West. The second half of the evening was dedicated to Terry Riley's latest work, Morning River (commissioned by the Norfolk and Norwich Festival). This composition is entirely devised for Silkstone's group Sounds Bazaar, with Silkstone effortlessly switching from violin to sitar, but the emotional weight is entirely carried by Amelia Cuni's voice (singing Hindi and English words). Particularly in the work's section, What the River Said, Terry Riley showed remarkable mastery both of his raga material and the fascinating instrumental combination."
— Hugh Vickers, The Independent, 29 October 1999
"…radical, unexpected and yet very elegant…"
— Waltraud Schwabe, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 7 December 1999
About her dhrupad CD recording
"…It is Indian music, ethnic music as Bach is ethnic, concentrated beauty which does not make any concession nor takes shortcuts. An uplifting language, still far away but brought closer by that sweet sounding, familiar voice, an embassy of civilisation."
— Giordano Montecchi, l'Unità, 30 August 1999
"…Amelia Cuni is one of the very few Westerners to have mastered the complexities of Indian vocal music… It is all more remarkable that she sings dhrupad, a style which is usually the exclusive province of men… Cuni is an excellent performer who explores the subtle nuances of each raga in extended alap sections and metered compositions. Her acute rhythmic control and fine sense of intonation lead to many inspired, beautiful and surprising musical moments…"
— Gerry Farrell, Songlines, Winter 2001
About the multimedia performance Ashtayama – Song of Hours
"This production is definitely one of the most noteworthy performances ever seen at the Medientheater… Many types of mixing for one evening, which has made an impression precisely because of its careful, well-judged coordination of the various components… Rituals of a theatre full of atmosphere that, apart from its original function, has the power to fascinate and carry us 'beyond the opposites.'"
— Rolf Fath, Badische Neueste Nachrichten, Karlsruhe, 29 January 2000
"Ashtayama by Amelia Cuni and Werner Durand thrilled the audience in the Tanzhaus Düsseldorf with Song of Hours. An impressive sound performance with a fascinating voice in a superlatively conceived multimedia setting."
— Bernd Schuknecht, Rheinische Post, 27 September 2002
"…A clear, and typically multicultural, highlight was a captivating conceptual setting of Indian dhrupad vocalising by Italian Amelia Cuni, in collusion with electronic manipulation by Werner Durand and elaborate projections by Uli Sigg… Cuni was the sole live performer in the Ashtayama – Song of Hours, alternately sensual, bold and contemplative. The hour-long work, in its US premiere, combined her intense and measured singing with swirling electronic effects. She became part dancer and performance artist, surrounded by a translucent circular screen on which Sigg's projections conveyed the elements — water, fire, weather — and abstractions…"
— Josef Woodard, Los Angeles Times, 9 March 2004
"…Cuni is one of only a handful of Western women to seriously study dhrupad, an austere style of classical North Indian music; whatever the technical specs of her vocal control, she sounds like a master to me, but with a vulnerability that undercuts the machismo that is mastery's trap. For Ashtayama, she and Durand, a minimalist who makes instruments from plexiglass and PVC, created a high-concept multimedia Song of Hours that follows the diurnal cycle of raga from sunrise to night. Moving with hieratic precision inside a cylindrical scrim enlivened with projections by Uli Sigg, Cuni performed eight songs as Durand responded, in real time, with various loops and drones built from untreated samples of Cuni's wine-dark voice. At times, these layers of voice and image began to flutter like rose petals in the winds of time, and without budging from his seat, this reviewer simply left the hall…"
— Erik Davis, The Wire, Issue 243, May 2004
"…the piece was at once ancient and contemporary, contemplative and energising."
— Cathryn Hrudicka, Musicworks, Fall 2004, no. 90
"…Amelia Cuni's command over an impressive voice, video and vocal performance formed a perfect unity…"
— Marco Fava, Oberbadisches Volksblatt, 4 July 2005
About the CD Ashtayama – Song of Hours
"…what awaited me was nothing short of sheer surprise and pure delight. The combination of Amelia Cuni's powerful voice — completely faithful to its dhrupad training — and Werner Durand's musical diversity, full of twists and turns of a truly unexpected kind, have resulted in one of the most invigorating collaborations in recent memory…"
— Jameela Siddiqi, Songlines, Winter 2000/Spring 2001
"Italian singer Amelia Cuni has a voice like a drink of mountain stream water… Always at the centre lies Cuni's exquisite phrasing, delicate but determined, informed by prolonged and deep study of one of the world's great vocal traditions. This is not music that borrows a few Indian flavours, but a serious attempt to make something new and expressive from within Indian art music… If Ashtayama's effect is dreamlike, it's a dream in which every scene is clearly lit and the shadows have sharp edges."
— Clive Bell, The Wire, April 2001
John Cage's Song Books Complete at the Bielefeld Theatre
"…with Amelia Cuni, specialist for dhrupad singing and Indian dance, there was a high-calibre performer who represented both art forms in one person…"
— Stefan Drees, Positionen, no. 84
Roland Pfrengle's premiere at November Musik, Folkwang Hochschule, Essen
"…He wrote Metall for Amelia Cuni… She brought the necessary sensitivity to set these fine sound fields vibrating…"
— WAZ, 13 November 2002
Amelia Cuni – Werner Durand at the VOX Festival, Vancouver
"…Cuni and Durand made a powerful argument that hundreds of years old culture could not only inform, but also completely come alive in the contemporary with depth of spirit and a vision to the future. Simply put, this was an extraordinary concert!"
— Randy Reine-Reusch, Musicworks, Spring 2005
Raga d'Oltreoceano with Terry Riley
"…Riley's voice has been enchanting in the duets with skilful Cuni, who took care of embellishing the vocal traces left by the master. Surprising and fascinating was their capacity to fuse the beautiful Umbrian language of Francis of Assisi with the meditative and suggestive sounds of the duo. Such a Song of Creation would perfectly resonate in the static and mystic time of the La Verna monastery…"
— Marco Maria Tosolini, Il Gazzettino, 23 September 2005
John Cage, Song Books – Solo 58: 18 Microtonal Ragas, premiered at MaerzMusik, Sophiensäle, Berlin
"Amelia Cuni and her accompanists turned the not-totally-composed cycle into an enjoyable and humorous happening. They offered Cage's music in such a wholehearted way that both devotees to Cage and Indian music were equally satisfied."
— Volker Michael, Deutschlandradio Kultur, 25 March 2006
"Amelia Cuni's world premiere of Cage's Microtonal Ragas was certainly on the outer fringe of experimentation… Illustrating a unique relationship between tradition and experimentation, the performance pointed a way out of the ghetto of serious art music, as did MaerzMusik's investigation of cultural cross-fertilisation between East and West."
— Rick Fulker, Deutsche Welle Kulturmagazin, 5 April 2006
"Italian dhrupad singer Amelia Cuni, who trained her voice during more than 10 years living in India, presented the premiere realisation of her long-standing engagement with John Cage's Solo 58 from Song Books (1970): 18 Microtonal Ragas, with the assistance of Cage specialist Ulrich Krieger. Staged in the rustic surroundings of the Sophiensäle, it also included dance and small theatrical actions. She was flanked by two percussionists who filled most of the 70 minutes with frantic tabla rhythms or spacious and assorted percussion, while drone composer Werner Durand, Amelia Cuni's regular accompanist, spun subliminal spider webs of diffuse charm, strangely present and distant at once. Like an open game, the 18 Microtonal Ragas followed one another in controlled, elegant improvisation (not a common feature of Cage's music), reaching a balance between chance events and gradual evolution."
— Paristransatlantic, July 2006
Solo 58 performance and CD reviews
"Amelia Cuni, a singer specialised in dhrupad, has worked on this material not yet fully performed, elaborating it in order to find a definite meeting point between the compositional techniques of the author and the basis of his Indian music inspiration… The melodic modulations and the use of rhythm come together in the vision of Amelia Cuni, great interpreter, with dance, gestures, body and hand movements and facial expressions contextualising the whole and giving the music a scenic dimension without jeopardising it. The voice is accompanied by percussion and electronics, which become protagonists too in their own right, especially when, like last night, they are realised by as exceptionally rare virtuosi as Ray Kaczynski, Federico Sanesi and Werner Durand. A discovery, so to speak, another aspect of the multiple and fascinating world of John Cage."
— Luis Suñén, El País – Cultura, 3 April 2006
"But Cuni's singing is what should make her a sensation in various new, world, experimental and alternative music scenes. She is essentially an Indian vocalist with Italian flair, theatricality and technique. This is a new kind of hybrid singing, and it is stunning… Hers is a huge array of vocal effects impressively disciplined. The ragas were not quite of India, not quite of Thoreau's Concord or anyplace else. They seemed more from an Asian subcontinent that is everywhere… An excellent CD document of Cuni's performance of 18 Microtonal Ragas has just been released on Other Minds Records."
— Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times, November 2007
"Cage was inspired by eastern philosophy at a theoretical level. Amelia Cuni turns theory into practice and performs Solo 58 with classical Indian singing tradition as her point of departure — a radical and moving experience."
— Ultima Festival programme, 2007
"A singer and composer living in Berlin, Cuni is a rarity — a Western woman who has spent a decade in India studying North Indian dhrupad singing and kathak dance. She is that uncommon artist who is equally comfortable in the oft-discomforting realms of contemporary multimedia musical collaboration and in the traditional world of Indian raga… When I listened to the CD in the relative comfort of my own home, I was tempted to drop all program notes, close my eyes, and trance out. Such is the all-encompassing nature of Cuni's realisation… A traditional review has no place here. Get the CD. Read first, then listen. There's nothing like it."
— Jason Serinus, San Francisco Classical Voice, November 2007
"The result, as considered as it is refined, is a highly original distillation of emotions, governed by the close and unveiled presence of Amelia Cuni's voice, limpid and supple as a reed… An encounter between Cage and the East that few would have imagined so persuasive, so direct, so heterodox however you look at it, from New York or from New Delhi."
— Giordano Montecchi, Il giornale della musica, September 2008
"Cage meant the performer to evoke the spirit of Indian music but Cuni brings matters full circuit by realising the piece as one intimately versed in the tradition's techniques and microtonal inflections. Cage provides a microtonal skeleton and Cuni manipulates the minuscule micro-divisions between notes with an innate ease that Western performers can take as a measure for the future. The result is a profoundly authentic, Apollonian beauty."
— Philip Clark, Gramophone, July 2008
"The Other Minds CD presents vocalist Amelia Cuni's fascinating interpretation of John Cage's microtonal Ragas… Cuni and her collaborators are absolutely up to the task. The singer brings an intriguingly diverse cultural and musical background to this project of mixed Italian and German heritage… indeed, each piece presents new melodies in vastly different registers, requiring inventiveness and prowess from the vocalist… She has been performing the work for six years, and this riveting recording is a testament to her dedication."
— Marc Medwin, Signal to Noise, June 2008
"In classical dhrupad singing, Amelia Cuni has achieved a virtuosity that earns her respect even in India… Embedded in a finely wrought sound design of electronics and percussion, Cuni delivers the melodies with expressive gesture. Her voice enters so sensitively that it brings the finest emotional stirrings of the ragas to expression."
— Christoph Wagner, Jazzthetik, June 2008
