Past Performing Arts | Music

Otherworld Performance Lab: Lisa Bella Donna

Mysterious Incantations 

featuring a Q&A with Amy Turn Sharp

Virtual

Mysterious Incantations is an instant composition and electronic tone poem written for ARP and Moog synthesizers by internationally acclaimed recording artist Lisa Bella Donna.

Composed for Columbus’s scintillating Otherworld art installation, Mysterious Incantations explores the space’s breathtaking atmosphere. “I couldn’t wait to evoke my own sonic alchemy in such a sprawling, majestic environment,” Bella Donna says. “I wanted to create lush crosscurrents of time and temperament, a celestial storm of wonder and discovery, an extensive meditation of stereo images within the wilderness of sound.”

Enjoy a Q&A between local poet Amy Turn Sharp and Lisa Bella Donna after the performance.

More about the artist

Lisa Bella Donna is a renowned recording artist, composer, modular synthesist, sound designer, educator, and clinician. She has decades of experience as a multi-instrumentalist and session musician and has developed extensive techniques with musique concrète, modular synthesis, analogue recording and mixing techniques, microtonal music, orchestration, and film composition. Bella Donna has traveled throughout the United States, Japan, and Europe performing concerts and conducting workshops and has been commissioned for many multichannel audio art installations in the United States and Europe.

View the Otherworld Performance Lab lineup.


More about the series

Otherworld Performance Lab is an experimental, creative collaboration of makers, artists, musicians, and dreamers whose work unfolds inside Columbus’s magical, immersive art installation, Otherworld.

In this three-part series, Bella Donna and others enter our virtual laboratory to perform from one of Otherworld’s wondrous and surreal spaces. Dubbed one of the “world’s coolest places” in 2019 by Time magazine, the 32,000-square-foot museum blends science fiction and fantasy with its dizzying array of mixed-reality playgrounds, secret passageways, and rooms of large-scale, interactive installations. Experience its wonder from the comfort of home at this not-to-be-missed, prerecorded event.

Audio production for Otherworld Performance Lab is provided by Secret Studio in Franklinton, a multipurpose studio/salon for creative audio recording, workshops, and art events. Owners Keith Hanlon and Amy Turn Sharp work to design opportunities for creativity and community to merge and flourish.

Video production is provided by the Columbus-based creative production team GHØST LABEL, comprised of GHØSTs from the shadow realm who have created rad video content and worked with humanity to solve pizza-related crimes for nearly a decade.

Lisa Bella Donna performing

Lisa Bella Donna | Photo: © 2021 Lisa Bella Donna Music / Appalachian Recordings

Lisa Bella Donna performing

Lisa Bella Donna | Photo: © 2021 Lisa Bella Donna Music / Appalachian Recordings

Lisa Bella Donna performing

Lisa Bella Donna | Photo: © 2021 Lisa Bella Donna Music / Appalachian Recordings

Lisa Bella Donna performing

Lisa Bella Donna | Photo: © 2021 Lisa Bella Donna Music / Appalachian Recordings

Lisa Bella Donna performing

Lisa Bella Donna | Photo: © 2021 Lisa Bella Donna Music / Appalachian Recordings

Lisa Bella Donna performing

Lisa Bella Donna | Photo: © 2021 Lisa Bella Donna Music / Appalachian Recordings

Lisa Bella Donna performing

Lisa Bella Donna | Photo: © 2021 Lisa Bella Donna Music / Appalachian Recordings

Lisa Bella Donna performing

Lisa Bella Donna | Photo: © 2021 Lisa Bella Donna Music / Appalachian Recordings

Lisa Bella Donna standing in front of mixers and audio equipment

Lisa Bella Donna | Photo: © 2021 Lisa Bella Donna Music / Appalachian Recordings

A photo of a mixing board and consoles

Photo: © 2021 Lisa Bella Donna Music / Appalachian Recordings

A multicolored, heavily purple image of a room in Otherworld

Photo: © 2021 Lisa Bella Donna Music / Appalachian Recordings

WEXNER CENTER PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY
The Wexner Family
Greater Columbus Arts Council
The Columbus Foundation
American Electric Power Foundation
Ohio Arts Council
Adam Flatto
Mary and C. Robert Kidder
Bill and Sheila Lambert
L Brands Foundation
Institute of Museum and Library Services
Nationwide Foundation
Vorys, Sater, Seymour, and Pease
Arlene and Michael Weiss

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY
Carol and David Aronowitz
Michael and Paige Crane
Pete Scantland
Axium Packaging
Bocchi Laboratories
Fenwick & West LLP
Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams
President Kristina M. Johnson and Mrs. Veronica Meinhard
KDC/ONE
Nancy Kramer
M/I Homes
Voyant Beauty
Huntington
Lisa Barton
Regina Miracle International Ltd. 
Washington Prime Group
Alene Candles
Fuel Transport
Russell and Joyce Gertmenian
Liza Kessler and Greg Henchel
Matrix Psychological Services
Paramount Group, Inc.
Ron and Ann Pizzuti
Joyce and Chuck Shenk
Bruce and Joy Soll
Clark and Sandra Swanson
Business Furniture Installations
CASTO
E.C. Provini Co, Inc.
Garlock Printing & Converting
Jones Day
M-Engineering
New England Development
Our Country Home
Performance Team
Premier Candle Corporation
ProAmpac
Steiner + Associates
Textile Printing
Andrew and Amanda Wise

Close

Past Performing Arts

Otherworld Performance Lab: Lisa Bella Donna