Lea Bertucci

By By Justin Christopher Poulin, Contributor

Photo by, West Den Haag

Meet Lea Bertucci

Lea Bertucci is fascinated by mistakes.

In her work, accidents aren’t just expected, they’re desired. Her music is often created to coax unique sounds and timbres out of a particular place—and I’m not just talking about a stage or venue—that place may be a grain elevator, or the hollow body of a bridge. Bertucci’s compositions occupy the liminal spaces between the art of music and the art of architecture.

But what happens when the liminal space in question isn’t physical, but temporal? 2020 found us living in transition. Adapting to an ever-changing way of life, we’ve all straddled the line between what we believed was “normal” and a bizarre new commonplace. In this space, Bertucci put together what would become her new album, A Visible Length of Light, which is out via Cibachrome Editions on April 16. Full of wayward drones and bits of life captured from across the world, any accident is a happy accident, and like watching Bob Ross work his magic, it’s an exploration of uncanny comfort.

Here, we chat with Lea Bertucci about the new album, her compositional approach, and jamming out with dead musicians.

Two truths and a lie with Lea Bertucci

(Answers at the bottom of the interview)

- Octopuses have 9 brains

- The average lifespan of a narwhal is 120 years

- The largest organism in the world is a mushroom who lives in the Pacific Northwest

Do you have a piece of musical gear that you have been really into lately?

I recently got a Sony TC-440 reel to reel tape machine, which I've been using in my project with Amirtha Kidambi. It's a great machine, three tape speeds, sound-on-sound, and built in echo.

The New York Times called your 2019 album, Resonant Field, one of the best jazz albums of that year; other publications have described your music as "modern composition, "sound design," "musique concrète," and even "classical." For our readers who might not be familiar with your sound and compositional style, how would you personally describe your approach to creating music?

I like that people have a tough time categorizing my music, because it exists at the intersection of a bunch of different influences, but the way I make and think about music has nothing to do with genre. I'd say in general, I take a phenomena-based, timbral approach to my music. I'm fascinated by just intonation, microtonality, mistakes and accidents, the magic alchemy of the recording medium, creative misuse of electronic objects and instruments, and the meeting of architecture, acoustics and music.

I saw you discuss your "four-dimensional" concept behind your last couple projects-- how physical space and time are used as compositional tools. As I understand, your 2020 release, Acoustic Shadows, was performed and recorded in a hollow-body bridge in Cologne, and your 2019 release was recorded in a grain elevator in Buffalo. I have to ask, where is the strangest place you've performed?

By strange do you mean the most acoustically extreme or just unusual? When I was in Buffalo at the grain elevator, I performed with a saxophone quartet which was pretty wild in that space. I've performed in cement mines, underground military bunkers, silos, decommissioned nuclear reactors - all are amazing in different ways. In general, I find that I become bored with the proscenium configuration to present and develop music, that I am much more interested in a "four-dimensional" approach that incorporates movement (of both audience and performer), and expanded durational aspects (for example a performance that leads into or activates an installation).

To piggyback off of that question, in an ideal situation-- if you could perform anywhere-- where would you choose and for which instruments?

On the eastern coast of Britain, there are these amazing cast concrete parabolic dish structures, two facing each other. They are leftovers from WWI and are designed to capture the sound from the distant ocean of ships that might have been lurking to attack. I would love to do a performance between these dishes, which focus on the sound and amplify the surrounding oceanscape.

Your new single might be arguably your most "melodic" yet. What inspired this new direction?

I wouldn't really say it is a new direction.. the rest of the album is definitely not as melodic as the lead single - so don't be fooled! The record is full of churning noise, drones and weird field recordings. As for the single, I wonder if all the Bach preludes I had been playing during quarantine so as not to go completely insane account in some way for this. That track is just what came out of me at a particular moment when I was improvising and thinking of certain things. It's definitely not any kind of conscious strategy.

How would you describe your new album in a five-word sentence?

An offering of catharsis, yo.

Some of us on the TFR staff have recently been talking about supergroups, which makes me wonder: who would be your dream collaborator?

An elderly Beethoven, bedridden, half deaf, and with a drain attached to his stomach.

Any final comments? (This is your electronic soapbox for one last answer)

Thanks for having me!

Two truths and a lie answer key:

Truth: Octopuses have 9 brains

Lie: The average lifespan of a narwhal is 120 years

Truth: The largest organism in the world is a mushroom who lives in the Pacific Northwest