Lea Bertucci & Norbert Rodenkirchen

Crystalline, minimal and dissonant, The Days Pass Quickly Immersed in the Shadow of Eternity is a new composition for sampled and live early flutes in 8-channel sound by Lea Bertucci. Steeped in folkloric influences, this work is a haunting contemplation of time, duration and memory, evoking the primeval and futuristic simultaneously. Written for master flutist, early music scholar, and member of the legendary early music group Sequentia, Norbert Rodenkirchen, this work reaches back through the spans of history and catapults ancient music into an mesmeric present. The collection of flutes that Norbert has amassed over many decades features unique instruments not usually found in the repertoire of most flutists, from the Renaissance to the Neolithic: Medieval Traverso, Swan Bone, Sheep Bone, Renaissance Tenor and Renaissance Bass. Pre-recorded sustained pitches and abstracted melodic fragments generated from these flutes are sampled and live deployed across an eight channel speaker array. The drones pulsing through the sound system create a lush and dissonant bed over which Norbert plays with minimal amplification, in effect expanding and contracting the instrument from its point of live origin to a diffused, spatialized sonic environment. The project premiered November 20th, 2025 at the ZKM in Karlsruhe, DE and is the recipient of the 2023 Gigahertz Prix. Lea and Norbert have toured the US together in summer 2026.