Wadium’s concept for Notepainting’s album cover features her painted face.
It’s not at all unusual for budding musicians to tread the DIY highway to get their music released. Local pianist Elizabeth Wadium gives the approach a double-shot of Red Bull. An established photographer and cinematographer, Wadium, a UW-Madison grad, used her considerable visual skills to create her own album cover and videos to support her just-released Notepainting, an album of gorgeous original compositions.
“I was a musician before I was a visual artist, but music is visual for me,” says Wadium, who ditched piano lessons at the tender age of 12 and taught herself to compose. “When I’m composing, my mind wanders. I’ll stumble on a sequence of notes and an image pops into my head.”
Neoclassical artists typically don’t use videos to promote their work, but Wadium has no trouble breaking norms. The video she created for “Selva Obscura,” one of several affecting songs on Notepainting, actually came first: Wadium went into the woods to collect footage of her stroll in the sylvan setting before she even wrote the song.
Wadium’s better known on the local scene for her visual chops. Her credits include photography and music video work with local acts like Fall II Rise, Anna Wang and The Fine Constant — and her film work, including a 2015 documentary called Prairie Burns, has appeared in the Wisconsin Film Festival.
It took Wadium five years to build up the courage to release Notepainting, but delaying actually served the process. “One of the benefits of waiting is that I had time to develop these trades,” she says. “All these connections I had built up with musicians also helped.”
And hey, let’s talk about that album cover, an image of Wadium’s face painted by an artist friend to evoke two of the songs from her album — “Dance With Me” and “Stargazing.” It took six hours to complete, and looks like the sort of thing you’d see on the face of a hardcore Renaissance festival performer. It’s also arresting as hell.
“Classical musicians usually put themselves on the album cover,“ Wadium explains. “I wanted something that expressed more of what I was trying to say.”
Expect Wadium’s utility-infielder approach to continue. She recently picked up the viola, and is planning to accompany herself on a collection of forthcoming piano duets. She’s also prepping some singer-songwriter numbers for another EP.
“I’m not counting on music to save me,” she says. “I have a hard time seeing myself specializing. As long as it’s creative, I’m there.”
Fans can stream the album for free on Wadium’s website (elizabethwadium.com/notepainting), or buy a download on Bandcamp.
