Lea Bertucci ~ Of Shadow and Substance

The anthropocene epoch has become a rich if grim source of inspiration for legions of artists. Defined as the period in which human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet, the epoch began some say in the 1950s, around the time that radioactive fallout was beginning to be detected around the planet, far from the sites where nuclear bombs were being tested.

A terrifying hallmark of the anthropocene is that it stands to be the age in which much of the human race perishes, owing to our heedless reliance on fossil fuels and concomitant embrace of an exploitive consumerist system. To an artist enmeshed in these culturally lethal forces, a conundrum presents itself: What is the value of one’s art and how does one continue making it in the face of such an overwhelming, life-or-death dilemma?

As musician, composer, and visual artist Lea Bertucci has done on her latest album, Of Shadow and Substance, released on her own label, Cibachrome Editions, you do it because you have no other choice. But you also make of your art a kind of activism, one that offers a critique while engaging with the cause of your concern in real time.

Composed of two long-form tracks, OSAS begins with “Vapours,” commissioned by Italy’s Quartetto Maurice. Working with divergent definitions of the title – vapor as a molecule in a liminal state between liquid, gas, or solid; vapour as a sexist medical term that reached its height in the Victorian era to diagnosis women’s “hysteria” – Bertucci prompted the quartet to visualize airborne vapors in transition while also contemplating the misogynistic pseudo-diagnosis.

Playing from a graphically notated score, with Bertucci providing spatial amplification and electronic accompaniment in real time, the Quartetto Maurice (Georgia Privitera, Laura Bertolino, Francesco Vernero, and Aline Privitera) conjure up a keening, pulsing atmosphere of sustained intensity that hovers in roiling, perpetual unrest.

With their instruments (two violins, alto violin, and cello) tuned using just intonation while calling on their deep range of bowing techniques, the quartet explore a broad range of textures, timbres, and harmonies through open string bowing, harmonics, and Bartok pizzicato. While generally minimal in nature if not exactly subdued, the piece erupts just past the halfway mark into a tactile, tuneless frenzy before subsiding and gradually fading away in an ambiguously melancholic drift.

OSAS takes a decidedly different turn with the title track, “Of Shadows and Substance,” commissioned by Philadelphia’s ARS Nova Workshop. Working with double bass, cello, harp, percussion, and electronics, Bertucci, and her fellow musicians Henry Fraser, Lester St. Louis, Lucia Stravros, and Matt Evans begin quietly before quickly crescendoing into a roaring welter of feedback, clattering percussion, and fiercely bowed double bass and cello. This billowing soundcloud throbs and pulses, changing dynamics and dimensions while sustaining itself in a virtuosic display of corrugated textures, squinting strokes, and scalloped tremolos. Bertucci expands the sound palette, instructing her players at times to bow on the metal tailpiece of the cello or insert brass rods between the strings of the double bass to produce richer textures, while proving them with a graphically notated score to which they can improvise. The result is a harsh, churning work that feels both prehistoric and post-apocalyptic.

In her liner notes, Bertucci makes mention of her music hopefully providing “a brief glimpse into what it is to be human in what feels like these waning days of the Anthropocene.” With Of Shadows and Substance, she has created something both deeply personal and darkly universal. (Damian Van Denburgh)