A photo of a profile of a woman looking to the left.
Colombian musician, vocalist and composer Lucrecia Dalt kicks off her upcoming U.S. tour at the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU. (Photo by Aina Clement)

May 1, 2023

ICA at VCU presents Colombian musician, vocalist and composer Lucrecia Dalt

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By Leila Ugincius

The Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University presents Colombian musician, vocalist and composer Lucrecia Dalt as part of its ICA Live series on Sunday, May 7, at 7 p.m.

The event, which is free and open to the public, kicks off Dalt’s upcoming U.S. tour in support of “¡Ay!,” her 2022 Spanish-language sci fi concept album that Pitchfork named “Best New Music” and called “philosophically daring, technically ambitious, and a joy to experience.” Reservations can be made at www.eventbrite.com/e/ica-live-lucrecia-dalt-tickets-590430452377.

Dalt released her eighth solo album, “¡Ay!,” in 2022, conjuring a new realm where her signature experimentation and treasured early influences meld together. Growing up in Colombia, she was surrounded by a spectrum of tropical music genres such as salsa, mambo, bolero, son and merengue.

In those formative years, Dalt inherited musical obsessions and intuition that pulled her toward local orbits of experimental sound, first leading her to collaborate with Medellín’s Series Media Collective – a group of musicians that shaped the music scene in the Colombian city – which released her debut album, “Acerca,” in 2005. Dalt’s former career as a geotechnical engineer signaled an ability to dig deep into the multidimensional worlds of cinema, fiction, astrophysics and desire, manifesting in the conceptual contours of her early solo albums “Commotus” in 2012 and “Syzygy” in 2013 on Berlin-based label Human Ear Music. Upon relocating to Berlin in 2014, Dalt’s surrealist tendencies were reconfigured in her fifth full-length “Ou” in 2015 on German experimental label Care of Editions.

Beyond the scope of her solo music, Dalt’s embrace of cross-disciplinary collaboration has brought her sound work to a multitude of immersive and audiovisual projects. In her work for the screen, Dalt composed the original scores for the films “Catábasis” and “The Seed” in 2021, as well as the score for the HBO series “The Baby,” which was released in 2022 by Invada Records and RVNG Intl.