Italian Songwriter LIET Debuts Her New Album

(TREVISO) —Dressed in a long black dress with brick-red flowers, an elegant black jacket and heeled ankle boots, LIET is on stage for the first time in TKTK. Her wavy hair is let down loose to the top of the shoulder and is of a vivid strawberry blond color. It contrasts with the dark beard of her accompanist and producer bass player Andrea Lombardini who is also wearing brick red and black. 

It is Oct. 22, and LIET, also known as Giulia Baldissera, is debuting at Dump with her new album “Eterna” (eternal, in English). The 24-year old songwriter is from Treviso, Italy. Timid in her demeanor yet fierce in her delivery, she sings for the first time the album’s seven songs and other covers before an audience.

The event is sold out. A hundred people fill the vintage-looking room of the bar, furnished with classic sofas and modern chairs. Everybody showed their vaccination green pass at the entrance, but masks can be removed while enjoying a drink at the table.

The album “Eterna” was recorded in May 2020 and released only a year and a half later, a sprint because of the hard work LIET and her collaborators put into it. “We also wanted to wait for live events to take place again,” she said. Her debut concert is also the first live session held in Dump after the pandemic; “It is still quite strange to see people sitting down during a concert,” she told The Click when asked how it felt to play live again.

Lights are down, except for two, small ceiling spotlights and a couple of fairy lights attached to the wall just behind LIET and Lombardini, illuminating them singularly. LIET opens the concert playing the last track of the album, “Altre fantasie,” just voice and guitar, just her alone. 

LIET performs in Treviso, Italy on Oct. 22. [Credit: Lavinia Elizabeth Landi]

“I felt pure, naked, and utterly emotional after playing the first song,” LIET told The Click after the concert. “I have been playing the guitar and singing alone for 10 years, so I was completely comfortable, but there was something new in that moment, being the first time I ever played my new, first album in front of an audience,” she said.

Lombardini, like everybody else, is immersed in the delicate yet vibrant sound of the young singer’s quiet notes. I look around and people have put down their drinks to fully enjoy the emotional atmosphere created by the singer. Nobody talks. Some whispering at times, which goes well with the peaceful sound of birds Lombardini recreated in the production of this first tune.

After playing the last song, people asked for more and LIET and Lombardini gave them an encore of two tunes, “Che mi lasci indietro” and the cover of “Puzzle” by Italian rock band Verdena.

“My biggest fear is to be eternally unhappy,” LIET revealed when asked to give advice to her peers on how to see their dreams come true. “Do what you want and work hard for it. And don’t be too shy to ask for help. People are there for you.”