A night with Luke Deane/Lisa feat. Valentina Vella

This year, Splendor’s musicians join ADE with their own vision of dance music. Expect acoustic-electronic fusions, bold collaborations, and boundary-crossing performances. Let yourself be moved, surprised, and inspired by Splendor’s signature sound—with a dancefloor twist.

This evening is inspired by the worldwide experimental music concept of night of the unexpected: expect something like a 60s happening: sets of gloriously unfiltered, untested experiments. This year featuring a bunch of sock puppets who sing with uncanny precision, hip and subby pop. Alongside the expo of this new TV show, poet and multi-disciplinary artist Valentina Vella joins Luke to present a taster of their upcoming full album together. In this set, entitled: There was Always Water, poetry, song, field recording and orchestration blur the boundaries between what is real, and what is high fantasy.

Luke DeaneLuke Deane (also known on-stage as ‘Lisa’) is a composer, vocalist and educator with a passion for co-composing and interdisciplinary working methods. Luke’s composition lineage can be traced back to Cornelius Cardew, teacher of Luke’s own mentor Howard Skempton. Luke is intrinsically collaborative, moving between projects and disciplines with a focus on cutting-edge ideas. Luke brings his formal composition background and knowledge to these ideas, in an endless search for their deeper musical qualities. Lisa (Luke’s alter-ego) is released her second album under the new name NÆT at ReWire 2025. Luke composed the original score for NITE, Asko Schonberg Ensemble, HIIT & NKK Next: NACHTWACHT, which was arranged for stage in collaboration with composer David Dramm and received widespread rave reviews including critics choice in Theatrekrant and nomination for best director at NTF.

“I’ve just cried my eyes out at the beginning of side 2, this is one of the better sounding vinyls I own, and I have a huge collection”, “So beautiful, my heart melts”, (Audience testimonies of Lisa’s previous album Footsteps on the Wall.)

Valentina VellaValentina Vella is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the emotional and narrative frameworks that shape behaviors tied to reproduction, work, and survival within political and ecological systems. Influenced by her Zen meditation practice, she investigates ways to shift our capacity to feel, relate, and imagine otherwise. Her immersive performances dwell in the threshold between personal and collective life, using humor, rhythm, and repetition.

Together, Luke (Lisa) and Valentina form a radical partnership grounded in trust, an ongoing exploration of how art can attune us to each other, and open new pathways for presence, relation, and change.

Luke Deane (Lisa): Voice, Electronics, Sock-Puppets, AVValentina Vella: Voice, Text