Lea Bertucci opens her 2015 ISSUE Residency with the premiere of The Cepheid Variations I + II, a pair of new works for pre-recorded sound collage and strings. Born out of an interest in the timbral and acoustic possibilities of harmonics, these pieces combine extended techniques for cello and viola with concrete sound, producing a shimmering mass of layered harmonics and ghostly resonances.
Drawing upon the natural acoustics of ISSUE's 22 Boerum Place theater, The Cepheid Variations explore movement of sound in space through the use of dissonance, wide dynamic fluctuations and particular sonic textures. Fragile harmonics that arise from the acoustic instruments give way to searing collage material, the two elements eventually obscuring one another.
With Leila Bordreuil, cello, and Jeanann Dara, viola.
Lea Bertucci is an interdisciplinary artist, composer and improviser working with installation, sound, and projection. As an instrumentalist, she focuses on an electro-acoustic preparation of the bass clarinet that heavily utilizes speaker feedback. In recent years, her projects have expanded to site-specific compositions for electronics and instruments, multichannel sound installations and music concrete collage. Bertucci has been an Artist-in-Residence at The Wave Farm, Smack Mellon, LMCC, and The Queens Museum of Art. She was awarded Young Composers' commissions from Roulette in 2008 and 2012. Her debut solo LP, Resonance Shapes was released in 2013 on the Obsolete Units label. Collaborators include Leila Bordreuil, G. Lucas Crane, Bhob Rainey, Anthony Saunders, Bradley Eros and Eli Keszler. She has performed solo and collaborative works at venues such as ISSUE Project Room, The Kitchen, Anthology Film Archives, Caramoor, Artists' Television Access (SF), Incubator Arts, Experimental Intermedia, The Wave Farm, Roulette, The Queens Museum of Art and the High Zero Festival among many others.
