a kind of nostalgia is a music-performance piece that explores techniques for distorting musical material through physical mimicry. The piece involves an experienced ‘guitarist’ playing a simple piece of their choosing from memory, and another ‘performer’, who may or may not be an experienced guitarist, holding a guitar. The ‘performer’ is sat across from the’ guitarist’ in a mirrored position and is read like a score, their physical movements being copied by the guitarist. In this performance, the ‘guitarist’ is on the left and the ‘performer’ is on the right.

Diego Castro / Michael Baldwin
St Paul’s, Huddersfield, England – 17 March 2014
music by Fernando Sor, Op.35 No.17

For more information on the performance above, and how the body of the ‘performer’ is being read, see the following annotated version of the video here: https://www.vibby.com/watch?vib=XyZB_rjQJM

“The beautiful result [of a kind of nostalgia] is a slow dismantling of [Fernando] Sor’s melody, a distortion not only heard but seen and empathetically felt in the movements of the two guitarists. As their bodies sway around each other in mirror form, eyes locked, and fragments of Sor drop away like items of clothing, this odd exercise in musical deconstruction takes on a strikingly intimate, even erotic dimension.”
– Tim Rutherford-Johnson [‘Unsettling Scores’, The Wire]