Vicente Avella is ready with a new album called Physics of Light. The music revolves around the physical properties of light. It drew inspiration from the different types of light, the various gradients of shadows, the color spectrum, the concept of chiaroscuro and other properties of light such as radiance, reflection and resistance. “I went about creating the music in this album in a way that would remain truthful and respectful to the science,” says Avella. “That being said, I am not a scientist nor a physicist so the result is more of a reflection of my own life experiences as seen through the physics of light.”
Press release by LAZZ Promotions
“Similar to all my previous projects, I composed and performed all the music in the album but something new about this one is that I recorded the music myself, in my living room, on my piano, a Boston GP 163. I have always loved the velvety sound and expressive touch of this piano and found I missed it when recording in studios. I have been wanting to record on it for quite some time and this quarantine seemed like the perfect time to do so,” continues Avella.
“Additionally, this quarantine gave me the final push I needed to go and record myself. I had been intimidated or had second thoughts in doing these things but since studios were closed and bringing an engineer home wasn’t an option, I took the plunge. As it turns out, I found myself really enjoying the process of finding the best mic placements, sculpting the sound I envisioned and polishing my recording skills. Now, you’d think that recording an album at home during a quarantine was an easy task but let me tell you, with my wife, our three young kids and a puppy also quarantined, finding that quiet time to record was not easy. Grateful to Christi, my wife, for taking the kiddos to the beach for a couple days. The puppy however did stay home with me as I recorded. This was wild card I didn’t know how it was going to play out but somehow it worked out,” says Avella.
“Another aspect of this album I wanted to share with you is how the artwork came about. During my research and studies of the physics of light, I kept gathering information and I had this idea of having a sort of collage of all this numbers, formulas and graphics as the artwork. I really wanted it to look like a Da Vinci sketch. To begin with, I created something myself. My original drawing conveyed what I wanted but it looked like a chicken scratch. I knew something needed to improve.”
“In the meantime, it took care of the accuracy of the content as it was important for me that all the science was accurate. I was lucky to find that a former composition student of mine, Satomi Ohnishi, happened to also be a physicist. She was kind enough to check everything for accuracy; something for which I was quite grateful. After the content was set, in order to make my chicken scratches look better, I commissioned Leo Moroh, an Italian artist residing in Paris to create a drawing out of all the formulas and all the graphics. I found him after spending hours upon hours researching pencil drawings on Instagram. I was very happy I did as his drawing exceeded my expectations. I found it to be the perfect cover to my album,” concludes Avella.
For more information and music samples, visit vicenteavella.com.