DOM LA NENA "Leon" (Sabia / Big Wax / Alter K)
Add Date: 5/9/2023
Release Date: 4/7/2023
FCC: Clean
Focus Tracks: Universo, Last Day, Fevrier
"Dom is like a very deft magician, and every song sounds sacred. -NPR
"HAUNTING" - New York Times
"AMAZING AND BEAUTIFUL" - BBC
Dom La Nena releases her fourth studio album, Leon
Described as a “deft magician” by the New York Times and “one of the most brilliant revelations” by Le Figaro, the world acclaimed composer returns to her roots with a moving solo cello album.
Following the acclaimed release of Tempo in 2021, Dom La Nena – the stage name of Brazilian cellist Dominique Pinto – is back with her latest album, Leon. Titled after the affectionate nickname she has given to her cello, Leon is a declaration of love to her lifelong accomplice. With Leon, Dom returns to her roots within an intimate, sensitive and transcendental setting.
Leon tells, first and foremost, the story of Dom’s discovery of classical music. A native of the Southern Brazilian city, Porto Alegre, Dom’s roots have always seeped into her music through beautiful variations of the Latin American repertoire. Her first musical epiphany however came through Vivaldi, after which she continued to flourish in the company of the romantic works of Chopin and the minimalism of Philip Glass. At eight years old, Dom’s family movedto Paris, and it’s in the French capital where she's first introduced to the cello. Leon was a gift from her parents that would change her life thereafter. By wielding the bow, Dom was able to find peace amidst the difficulties of uprooting and re-rooting. More than just a modest student cello, Leon became a confidant, friend and companion. In the times of joy, pain and in the solitude of hours and hours and hours spent practising, Dom La Nena developed a fusional relationship with her instrument, an intimacy and friendship that the musician pays homage to today on her new album, twenty years after their first encounter.
Back in Brazil at thirteen years old, and wanting to further her skills with the cello, Dom La Nena reached out to the renowned American cellist Christine Walevska, known as the “goddess of cello” and who lived between New York andBuenos Aires at the time. The young Dom moved to the Argentinian Capital on her own to study under Walevska, and from that point, became fully immersed in the life of a musician, no longer counting the steps it took to grow with her instrument. It was also during those fruitful years in Argentina, that Dom acquired the nickname, "la Nena", Spanish for “the Little Girl”, an allusion to Dom’s time as a child prodigy.
Back in Paris a few years later, everything happened very quickly for Dom after she graduated: Jane Birkin, Jeanne Moreau, Etienne Daho… Her talents as an instrumentalist were high in demand. In 2013, the singer and composer, Piers Faccini worked with Dom on her first solo album, Ela. The release was followed by a spurt of other creative projects, with Dom joining forces with singer Rosemary Standley to form the acclaimed duo Birds On A Wire. Parallel to her work with Birds on a Wire, Dom continued on her solo adventure releasing Soyo in 2015 and Tempo in 2021. The latter earned the musician a nomination for the Victoires du Jazz award and several stellar reviews by the international press.
From record to record, Dom La Nena has sung about time, her dreams and her fears, in the form of tender and poetic ritornellos, always supported by her cello. As Dom matures into an outstanding musician of her time, Leon emerges out of a desire to both renew and return. In an earnest expression of gratitude for her faithful companion, Dom composed and recorded the album during two months alone with her cello. It was then mixed by Noah Georgeson, known for his collaborations with Rodrigo Amarante and Devendra Banhart.
A true masterpiece of chamber music, Leon is a quest for simplicity, emotion and beauty, responding only to intuition, improvisation and a single constraint: to compose only with, and for, the cello. The process was an unprecedented exercise for Dom La Nena who, after so many collaborative endeavours, reconnects with her instrument, resuming the course of their inner dialogue as a soloist. Leon sees the composer refocus on her sound, her textures, nuances, and her ability to create and inhabit worlds. Repetitive patterns, refined orchestrations and drones – to give substance to Leon, Dom La Nena deploys a minimal approach very close to that of a mantra, whose active principle she has gotten to know well through her daily practice on her instrument. With Leon, Dom conveys a state of self-forgetfulness, concentration and pure presence in the moment.
With her new release, Dom La Nena is herself released. Freed from the rigidity of classical discipline and the weight of the repertoire, Leon allows for a glimpse of Dom La Nena’s own inner world and imagination. Listeners experience moving instrumental landscapes inspired by the feminist and pioneering cinema of Germaine Dulac, the whirlwind waltz of Anna Karenina, winter, storms of the soul, the heartbreak of departures, the subtle nostalgia and romanticism of train station platforms. Leon brings to the ear more than music, but a collection of stories, a world in itself populated by neat textures, spectral voices and contemplative silences.