University of Wisconsin–Madison

Lea Bertucci

Picture of Lea Bertucci with blue background

*Co-sponsored by Mead Witter School of Music.

Artist Talk

A Primeval Future: The Process of Creating The Days Pass Quickly Immersed in the Shadow of Eternity

Wednesday, September 23
Elvehjem L150
1-2:30 PM

Performance

Thursday, September 24
Collins Recital Hall, Hamel Music Center
7:30 PM

Artist Talk Abstract:

Lea Bertucci will present a lecture of her recent work that focuses on her recent project “The Days Pass Quickly Immersed in the Shadow of Eternity”, a composition for archaic flutes in 8-channel sound. She will also present a brief demonstration of the piece in stereo. 

Performance Abstract:

Bertucci will perform music from her last solo recording, 2025’s The Oracle. This body of work includes voice processed with tape, folk flutes, and electronics. Described by Brad Rose of Foxy Digitalis, The Oracle is “… dizzying and textural, a gilded aural mirror reflecting anxieties and mythologies back at strange angles.” Sure to be a heady trip.

Biography:

Lea Bertucci is an experimental musician whose works revolve around electronic and spatial extensions of instrument and voice. In addition to her longstanding practice performing with woodwinds, she has created compositions for strings, brass, percussion and other instruments, often incorporating electronics and multichannel sound. With an ear toward site-responsiveness and acoustics, her work has expanded toward installation and non-linear presentations of her music, often staged in hyper-resonant spaces.  Her discography spans over a decade, with eight full-length solo albums and a number of collaborative projects. She has released on a number of labels including Astral Spirits, Room40, American Dreams and Dinzu Artefacts. In 2018 and 2019, she released solo albums Metal Aether and Resonant Field on NNA Tapes, and has since founded her own label, Cibachrome Editions, with 2021’s A Visible Length of Light as the inaugural release. Recent collaborations include duos with Lawrence English, Olivia Block, Carlos Giffoni and Ben Vida, among others. 
Lea has performed both within the US and internationally with presenters such as The Whitney Museum, The Museum of Modern Art New York, The Metropolitan Museum, Blank Forms, Gagosian Gallery, Pioneer Works, The Kitchen, The Walker Museum, The Art Gallery of New South Wales Sydney, Tempo Reale in Florence, Muziekgebouw Amsterdam, Museo Reina Sofia Madrid, ReWire Festival, Borderline Festival, and Unsound Festival Krakow. In 2018, she was awarded a Jfund for New Music grant from the American Composers’ Forum and a commission for a brass octet from the Levy Gorvy Gallery in New York. Lea has attended artist residencies at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, The MacDowell Colony, Headlands Center for the Arts and ISSUE Project Room. She has received commissions from the INA GRM in Paris, Quartetto Maurice in Turin, and ARS Nova Workshop in Philadelphia. She is a 2024 recipient of the Gigahertz Production Prize from the ZKM in Karlsruhe.