Lucia Micarelli
Photo: Solaiman Fazel
Of the many pleasures a life making music can bring, Lucia Micarelli doesn’t hesitate singling out what brings her joy.
“It’s a bunch of people in a room together, and everybody contributes,” she said during a recent conversation. “That’s the thing that I personally love so much about performing live … to me, it’s just so special — live performance, the audience is such a big part of what goes down. … You have to work together with a whole bunch of strangers. That feels really special and unique to humanity.”
Micarelli — a Julliard-trained violinist whose eclectic career to date includes stints performing with Chris Botti, Josh Groban and Jethro Tull as well as a starring role as Annie Talarico in “Treme,” David Simon’s masterful evocation of post-Hurricane Katrina life in New Orleans — will face a fresh “bunch of strangers” Saturday at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas.
Musically, much has been made of the 39-year-old New York City native’s penchant for breezing between genres. A glance at the track listing for her most recent album, 2018’s An Evening with Lucia Micarelli gives a pretty clear indication of her elastic artistic appetites: Songs by Steve Earle and Led Zeppelin rest alongside compositions from Ravel, Saint-Saens and Barber.
“I like to think of it when I’m playing a show, it’s almost like I’m inviting people into my home for dinner or something,” Micarelli said. “Because I’m kind of trying to create — obviously, it’s an experience — but I’m trying to create an experience and an environment and, like, an ambiance, and I want people to come in.”
But that omnivorous approach — not to mention the pleasure it fosters on both sides of the stage — is, according to Micarelli, driven by something as uniquely human as the unreproducible alchemy of a live performance.
“The main thing for me is always just something that makes me feel emotional,” she said. “Art and music are essential to humans, for some reason. All I can come up with is that it’s important for us to explore emotions and share emotions that way, and also tell stories through these mediums. And I feel very connected to that.”
Lucia Micarelli at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas. 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 20. Tickets are $25-$71.
Preston Jones is a North Texas freelance writer and regular contributor to KXT. Email him at [email protected] or find him on Twitter (@prestonjones). Our work is made possible by our generous, music-loving members. If you like how we lift up local music, consider becoming a KXT sustaining member right here.
