Lea Gavino: "Music demands me to be completely authentic" Interview with the singer and actress

"Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?" is a painting by the French artist Paul Gauguin, a sort of fresco of life, a spiritual testament dating back to 1897. The interview with Lea Gavino, a Roman singer-songwriter born in 1999, begins in much the same way. Perhaps there’s less spirituality, but the question is similar: where is she in her career, her journey, her public and artistic life? The answer is clear and bright, just like her gaze.

Interview with Lea Gavino: between music and acting

"We are at the beginning of my music career, which I hope will be long. I am in a period of discovery, making important decisions that will be the roots of this journey. It’s a time of great curiosity and joy," she answers, leaning on the monumental table in the main meeting room of our Milan office. At this moment, her music career has a title, just like the painting. It is Amico lontano, a song that, by her own admission, "was written about a year ago. I was at home, it was cold outside, dark. It was a somewhat melancholic day, I was thinking about the major absences that have marked my journey, my emotions, my life. I was also thinking about how I dealt with them, if we can say they can be dealt with, or how I faced them," she reveals to us. "I think I did it with a lot of imagination and childlike positivity. I wanted to try to show how imagination can fill in the gaps," she concludes, a bit dreamily.

A new beginning, then, in an acting career that has taken her from television to cinema, from Skam Italia to Una storia nera, and now brings her to the stage. Without too much difficulty: "Acting work has moments of fullness and moments of emptiness, so there are times when you work a lot alternating with pauses. During the pauses, I write a lot, also because acting experiences leave you something, they change you. So in the end, there’s always something new to say," she explains. "They share the fact that they are both languages through which you communicate. Acting has a screen, the role, so I don’t speak my own words, my own feelings. It’s a kind of false authenticity. Music, on the other hand, requires me to be totally authentic, because I tell my own stories."

Speaking of stages, she imagines hers "with many musicians, with many other voices alongside me. It’s a big dream: lots of choirs, lots of people, lots of instruments, from the smallest to the largest." As for authenticity, it’s impossible not to ask how she manages social networks, between work and pleasure. "I see social networks as a light narrative. Authenticity is hard to convey, I can only do it through arts and creative things, those that require construction. Social media lacks this part, the construction, the process, so it misses my way of living authenticity. I share pieces, moments, at most."

The conversation unexpectedly opens on moments of depth. Talking about how she prepares for an audition or performance, she offers a bright insight: "I don’t always have to be at my best. It’s part of my ritual. There are days when it comes naturally to be very performing, other days when you’re a bit low-key. Even in the latter case, you can get something good. Mostly, I do superstitious rituals," she adds, laughing. "I especially reference School of Rock, my life movie." "And then," she adds when we tease her a little more, "it also depends on the song I’m going to sing. If I have to sing a song that reflects how good I feel that day, it’s enough to interpret it and get back on that wave. Although I generally write songs about how badly I experience things, so performing splendidly wouldn’t be consistent," she concludes. And the future? Lots of writing. "I’m working on songs I’ve already written, they are in the stage of editing and production. It’s a phase of construction, of putting together the pieces of the puzzle, understanding which need work, which are ready, and adding new ones."