Art Notes: Norwich musician releases new album
Published: 10-16-2024 7:01 PM |
Two years ago, Lisa Piccirillo was at an intermediate stage in a musical journey.
She’d written a suite of songs during the pandemic, a process that had helped her work through some dark days and find a ray of light. She was ready to make a record and set about raising money and bringing together musicians.
The finished product, a 10-song recording titled “Radiate,” emerges on streaming services on Friday in advance of a Saturday night release party at Briggs Opera House.
“Release” is a multi-faceted word, and Piccirillo hopes people who attend the event on Saturday night are able to experience a kind of release of their own.
“I really want it to be a sacred listening session,” she said in an interview this week.
The doors open at 6, and the lobby will feature a vintage fashion pop-up from Nancy the Girl and information from wellness practitioners at The Acupuncture Studio and Shake Away Stress. The show starts at 7 with a listen to the 45-minute recording, followed by a live show by Piccirillo, producer and multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Mendocino, percussionist Raphael Groten and The Radiate String Quartet, four Vermont Symphony Orchestra players who are on the recording.
“I want to give people a chance to lose themselves in the music,” Piccirillo said.
Her musical life has ranged from singing in an a cappella ensemble at Skidmore College (which recorded at a studio in Charlotte, Vt., Piccirillo’s introduction to the state) to writing and recording Americana music to playing in the busy cover band The Tricksters.
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“Radiate” is something else entirely, a plush, layered alt-rock record inspired by Piccirillo’s love for spiky ’90s queens like Alanis Morissette and Sarah McLachlan. Like them, Piccirillo deals with difficult emotions in her writing.
The tracks she’s released as singles so far sound as polished and dynamic as anything to come out of Vermont or New Hampshire. Most of the music was recorded in the home studio she and her husband, Seth Barbiero, built in a converted barn at their Norwich home. The string quartet was recorded at the soon-to-close Lane Gibson Recording and Mastering in Charlotte.
Making the record was “really a beautiful process of pushing the boundaries of music I’d made before,” Piccirillo said.
It doesn’t hurt that the final product was mixed by Michael Barbiero, the New Jersey based producer who has worked with everyone from John Lennon, Blues Traveler and The Velvet Underground to Ziggy Marley and Cypress Hill. He’s also Seth’s uncle, and came out of retirement to work on “Radiate.” Piccirillo’s brother, TJ, a graphic designer, laid out physical copies of the record’s lyrics for Saturday’s release.
The album sometimes seems lost as an art form, as listeners now download individual songs and compile playlists on their phones. Piccirillo remembers sitting with a new record and reading the lyrics in the liner notes. She’s made lyric videos for the songs on “Radiate.”
Thus far, though, there aren’t any physical copies of the record. Piccirillo doesn’t want to bring more plastic into the world, but would like to release “Radiate” on vinyl at some point.
In the meantime, the record will appear Friday pretty much wherever music streams from, Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple, and so on.
The event on Saturday is unusual in that, as Piccirillo put it, “we don’t usually just sit and listen” to a recording, particularly in a theater with other people. There will be theater lighting, but otherwise not much to see until the live music starts, so small children might have a hard time, Piccirillo said. And one of the songs contains some language best reserved for older teens and adults.
“I think there’s magic in sort of community listening,” Piccirillo said. She has sat with both her husband and her brother to listen to “Radiate” in the home studio. There’s a vulnerability in it that she’s grateful to be able to share.
“I’m a deeply feeling person,” she said. “I think people will be coming along for the ride. ... I hope people will hear part of their story in mine.”
For tickets ($25 in advance, $30 at the door) and more information about “Radiate” and Saturday’s event, go to lisapiccirillo.com.
Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.