There is beauty in the unexplainable. Matt Venuti understands this. For as much as the natural world has been explained, how the formation of the atmosphere and the geological metamorphosis of the ground beneath our feet has been detailed, Venuti understands the inherent mysticism and beauty that is found in nature. It’s a dynamic that the national touring musician and multi-media artist explores in his latest musical experience, AmeriCosmos, which touched down at The Bishop Museum of Science and Nature this April. AmeriCosmos pairs Venuti’s unique, ethereal music with footage of the natural wonders of the United States and visuals of the cosmos from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The performance, which is in essence an improvisational concert featuring a variety of remarkable instruments such as the Electronic Valve Instrument (EVI), the Hang, guitar, the Waves and his voice, is just a window into the career of one of the most distinctive musical artists of our time.

Venuti hails from the Finger Lakes region of New York state, where music coursed through his bloodlines like the rushing water of Taughannock Falls, the tallest single-drop waterfall east of the Rocky Mountains and 

a visual feature in AmeriCosmos. The son of a jazz pianist, Venuti spent his childhood playing the piano and brass instruments like the trumpet, before stumbling on the EVI at a club in Boston.

“The EVI is a MIDI wind synthesizer and I use it with a looper so that I can create all kinds of arrangements and then dissolve them into something else. It’s basically a perfect instrument with a looper to create a soundtrack on the spot,” says Venuti. “It’s a very complicated instrument in a lot of ways, but it’s incredibly versatile in terms of what you can do with it. I can make any sound with breath expression, with eight octaves of range.”

 The EVI became Venuti’s main calling card for his band,  The Venusians,  in San Francisco, where the group became a hit in the festival scene and amongst corporate entities. The Venusians with their distinct, ethereal, space-rock sound, would often make the soundtrack to an event, improvising music to the mood of a room. Throughout the band’s progression, however, Venuti found himself yearning for a more acoustic sound, an instrument that he could bring out into nature. Enter the Hang. “Someone told me about this instrument that looks like a flying saucer—you put it on your lap, play it with your hands and the sound is ethereal and amazing,” says Venuti. “Something went off in my head, just like with the EVI. I became obsessed with it.”

“It took me so deep into another expression of myself that I had not experienced before, but had always wanted to, and that is to bring people into a deep, peaceful place. I’ve always wanted my music to have a deep effect on people, like a medicinal effect and I felt like the Hang could do that,” says Venuti. Venuti burrowed even deeper into nature after the death of his wife, Yolanda Bain, in 2008. Armed with his Hang, Venuti would venture out into the wilderness, seeking some way to heal his heart. “I started to basically download these motifs, these patterns that I felt were somehow coming from her. I started to compose that way, not by doing it in front of people, but by going out into nature alone and feeling what’s going on all around me and recording compositions to that,” says Venuti. 

These experiences are what provided the inspiration for AmeriCosmos. Venuti returned to playing the EVI, with a deeper appreciation for the instrument—its ability to create a looping soundtrack fits perfectly with the visuals of AmeriCosmos—and began weaving in footage from his travels across America. Shots of Taughannock Falls and winter in the Finger Lakes are mixed in with visuals from the southwest, the Badlands and the Cascade Mountains. Venuti also looked to contacts of his at NASA, who steered him towards obtaining footage from the James Webb Space Telescope. 

The result is a visually and sonically stimulating piece of performance art. Aside from the spoken-word introductory piece, Desert Dreams, Venuti’s music is all improvised to the visuals of AmeriCosmos. “It’s a live music and visual journey through the heart of nature, the depth of sound and the vastness of space,” says Venuti. “I’ve heard that there’s something about this, both musically and visually, that calms people and gives them a deeper appreciation for nature, which I feel like we’ve lost as a culture. It also, in a sense, might be one of the things that we can all agree on—that we live in a beautiful country.”  

The Instruments

To produce the distinct, celestial soundtrack of AmeriCosmos, Venuti needs a particular set of instruments, many of which most audience members have never even heard of. Here is a list of all the tools that Venuti has at his disposal for the improvised performance, not including his voice.

Electronic Valve Instrument: A MIDI wind synthesizer that allows Venuti to produce an array of different sounds. 

Looper: A device that Venuti accesses by foot while playing the EVI, allowing him to record a musical section and play it back instantly, creating multi-layered improvised musical arrangements. 

 The Hang: Shaped like a flying saucer, the Hang (pronounced Hung) sits on Venuti’s lap and he plays it with his hands. The Hang produces a unique tonal sound, not unlike that of the steel pan drum, yet distinct from the line of handpan instruments. 

Guitar: Easily the most conventional of all the instruments Venuti plays. 

Gemini Bell: An “instrument of sound”, the Gemini Bell is a creation of Venuti’s close friend Richard Cooke, who also created the Waves. The Gemini Bell consists of two bells connected by a rod—Venuti plays each bell with a mallet creating dream-like, celestial sounds.

Waves: A percussion instrument, the Waves are most easily compared to that of a xylophone—aluminum keys shaped like hour glasses are played with a series of mallets, all creating different notes.

Huaca: A rare wind instrument, the Huaca is the first of the triple-chambered Ocarinas—a type of hand-held vessel flute that belongs to a family of instruments dating back to over 12,000 years.