©Photo: Dovile Sermokas

Olivia Belli announces new album, Intermundia

1/9/2023

On 1 September, Olivia Belli announced her new album with XXIM Records entitled Intermundia. Belli’s second full length release for the label sees the acclaimed pianist go beyond her deep connection to the natural world to explore the spiritual side of nature, something beyond the physical – the world of thin places. 

These locales, said to be where heaven and earth virtually meet, are places to soothe and sedate, or to beguile and enchant – places to catch glimpses of the transcendent. ​“Here, you become freed from everything non-essential, everything in the modern world,” explains Belli. ​“It is only you and your soul.” Such places have long been a part of her life and her own spiritual journey, and for Intermundia Belli chose eight locations, all in central Italy, very close to her home in Le Marche, and each represented by one track. 

Written in her home studio, each track started as a mood. A feeling. Inspired by field recordings Belli took at each location, she put the unique magic felt at each place into music, that otherworldly quality that goes beyond time or the purely physical. In other words, she sought to channel the locales’ spiritual essence, to give it a voice. Nowhere is that clearer than on ​‘Valadier’, the first track to be taken from Intermundia and a wonderfully calm, wistful work that conveys the same hope and sense of absolution to be found at the Tempio di Valadier, a sanctuary located at the entrance of the Frasassi Caves, in the province of Ancona, Marche.

“Tempio di Valadier is my refuge where I train myself to see what is real but invisible, to see beyond physical things to the spirit that shapes them. The temple has a singular beauty and a particular atmosphere that emanates from its perfection, in contrast with the bare rock.”

Olivia Belli

The track itself develops in an arc, beginning and ending in the same way – in the shadows. Progressing through a harmonic loop, it gets brighter and brighter until its themes are exposed in full light. Belli’s piano presents two continuous and sinuous themes, varied in different ways; a violin sings its own theme, composed of a few notes, spaced out by silences.

Olivia Belli - Valadier