A Tribute to Heidi Vincent Introduces this side of the door
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The bass Gianfranco Pescetti plays on Heidi
was a gift from the woman the song remembers. Years after Heidi Vincent encouraged him to trust his voice as a songwriter, the Italian-American musician has written a song in her memory. It’s built from gratitude and loss, and from the way one person can alter another’s life simply by believing in them early.
Released October 16, Heidi
is the lead single from this side of the door, due November 6. Its dedication gives the album’s preoccupations with change, connection and impermanence a personal focus. Vincent was a cellist, architect and visual artist; she and Gianfranco Pescetti played together in Borgia in San Francisco in the early 1990s. Her encouragement belongs to the story of how he became a songwriter, giving the tribute an emotional history that reaches well beyond this recording.
There’s something especially affecting about the way Gianfranco Pescetti anchors the tribute in the physical world. He recorded the bass part on the 1977 Fender Precision Bass Vincent gave him years ago. The thought of its wood and wire carrying a private memory forward gives the recording an intimacy beyond the dedication itself. An instrument passed between friends remains in use, its place in his life continuing to develop.
The wider album marks a return to a more singer-songwriter-focused direction after the instrumental electronic terrain of Daystar Nocturnal. Gianfranco Pescetti brings his interest in texture into that approach, combining synthesizers, acoustic instruments and electronic elements across the album. His background in ballet, choreography and landscape architecture offers another way into his work: an attention to motion and contour, to how individual details relate to the space around them. The turn towards songs places a human voice within that carefully considered setting.
The friendship honoured by Heidi
stretched beyond music, into painting, design and shared curiosity, then into absence. There’s grief in the dedication, certainly, but also a kind of steady thanks, the kind that takes years to find its expression. Remembering Vincent means recognising her part in work that continued after their time together.
As a preview of this side of the door, the single gives the album’s interest in transformation a human scale. A friendship from his San Francisco band days still has a place in the music he makes now. Heidi
keeps that relationship close, acknowledging both what has been lost and the encouragement that remains.
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