MUSIC
Chiara Gelmini’s musical practice moves between performance, research and pedagogy. From the close-harmony swing trio Les Babettes to the multilingual storytelling project A Suitcase Full of Notes (Una Valigia Piena di Note), her work explores the voice as a space of encounter, memory and cultural crossing.
Across different formats — concerts, narrative performances, vocal ensembles and training contexts — the voice becomes both instrument and relational medium: a way to create shared presence and temporary communities through sound.
Alongside stage performance, she works as a vocal coach and workshop leader, approaching vocal technique not only as musical training but as embodied awareness and expressive autonomy.
A Suitcase full of notes
A Suitcase Full of Notes is a world music project, but it's more than that: it's a travel experience through music in the original languages ​​of countries around the world—over twenty languages ​​from the Americas, Eurasia, and Africa—intertwined with a narrative rich in poetic inspiration.
A journey that explores sounds, stories, and musical landscapes where joy and melancholy coexist, where celebration arises from a need for sharing, and encounters with others become a rediscovery of a common humanity.
Born in 2009, the project offers a constantly evolving repertoire, ranging from traditional and folk songs to contemporary popular music, understood as music capable of touching the heart—from singer-songwriters to pop music—with a particular focus on female voices and artists.
The lead vocals are accompanied by guitar and accordion, enriched, where possible, by percussion and bass, always keeping the door open to cross-fertilization and collaborations with other musicians.
Les Babettes
Les Babettes is a female vocal trio founded in Trieste in 2011, featuring Anna De Giovanni, Eleonora Lana and Chiara Gelmini. Inspired by the elegance and vitality of 1930s and 1940s swing vocal groups such as The Andrews Sisters and The Boswell Sisters, the ensemble brings close harmony singing into a contemporary stage context.
Through original arrangements and a contemporary sensibility, the trio reinterprets jazz and American swing classics alongside Italian and European repertoire, blending irony, elegance and vocal precision in a visually engaging stage experience.
Each concert celebrates the energy of close harmony singing, where tight vocal interplay, rhythm and theatricality come together in a vibrant and joyful performance.
Over the years, Les Babettes have appeared at international festivals and theatres across Europe, collaborating with orchestras and big bands and renewing the language of swing for contemporary audiences.
THEATRE
Theatre as a space where languages ​​intersect: words, body, music, images, and technology interact in a shared dimension.
From classical tragedy to contemporary experimentation, my work explores the boundaries between performance, installation, and narrative, placing the living relationship with the audience at its core.
Experimental Theatre · Performances
Experimental theatre is approached as an interdisciplinary field where performance, visual art, sound and technology intersect.
Projects often take the form of site-responsive works and hybrid formats, expanding beyond the traditional stage into spatial and relational experiences.
Each performance is conceived as an open structure in which narrative, body and environment interact, inviting active audience engagement.
Classical Theatre · Cabaret
Alongside experimental research, a long-standing engagement with classical theatre and cabaret has shaped a parallel dimension of this artistic practice — ranging from ancient Greek tragedy to contemporary comedic forms.
Grounded in textual precision, vocal expression and stage rhythm, this work maintains a dynamic and immediate dialogue with the audience.
Whether in dramatic repertoire or ironic cabaret settings, the stage becomes a space of clarity, timing and shared emotional intelligence.
DANCE
Dance is conceived as a space of embodied research, encounter and transformation. It moves across different traditions and sensibilities — from European folk dances rooted in community and shared rhythm, to the radical introspection of Butoh, where slowness and presence reshape perception.
A strong commitment to inclusive and participatory formats informs this practice: movement becomes accessible to diverse bodies and abilities, and dance functions as a collective language beyond technical virtuosity.
Whether in community-based Balfolk contexts or experimental performance environments, dance operates as a tool for connection — exploring identity, memory and relationship through the intelligence of the body.
