Lido Pimienta Returns With Orchestral Album 'La Belleza'

(AR) It has been five years since the GRAMMY-nominated and Polaris Prize-winning artist Lido Pimienta debuted her breakout album, Miss Colombia, and today she reemerges with La Belleza, a transcendent new album created in conversation with both European classical music and her personal life. An iconoclast who creates music and fine art drawn from her experience as a Caribbean woman from Colombia, Lido Pimienta's new offering marks a defining moment in her already remarkable career. "The thought of making 'classical music' never occurred to me before, but making experimental electronica on Miss Colombia was not premeditated either," Pimienta says. "All I create is a natural evolution of my curiosity and stubbornness."

Working with Ableton and her MIDI controller and alongside producer Owen Pallett-a fellow Polaris Prize winner and composer and arranger for the Sampha, Lana Del Rey, and the GRAMMY-nominated Her soundtrack, among others-Pimienta felt herself repeatedly drawn to the Lubos Fiser soundtrack for the film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. Despite not being classically trained, Pimienta was excited by how this music felt like the opposite of Miss Colombia.

Alongside today's announcement she has shared the track "Mango," Listen below. "Mango" is a poem about being in love, but it is mainly a song about being in nature and carefree. The song is an ode to the mango, but it is also about sensuality, sexuality, and the freedom encapsulated in the simple act that many Caribbean diaspora share, to take a mango directly from the tree.

"Mango" took me back to my territory, to nature, to my people, to my village, where I watched love unfold all around me," Pimienta says. That seed of love for her country and people became an expansive love song. "I've always had an aversion to writing love songs-especially if they're about a man (insert barfing sound). But at the time, my love life was in a nebulous state: unrequited love, love from the past, love in the present-it was all I could think about. I resolved the hetero issue by keeping my love songs genderless. The sensuality is in the innuendo, in the nuance. I'm very proud of this song."

Just as she began this classical experimentation, choreographer Andrea Miller reached out to Pimienta about composing a piece of music for the New York City Ballet, becoming the first all-female team to do so. Additionally, Pimienta was the first woman of color to create a piece for the Ballet. When asked by The New York Times about seeing her music accompanying Miller's choreography, Pimienta said: "It feels potent, it feels extreme - I feel an abundance. When I see the dance responding to the rhythm, the sound, the melody, it's very emotional for me."

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