For cellist Emily Wittbrodt the way lyrics fit within her melodies is nearly as important as the words themselves. She decided to write the melodies using a kind of dummy text, laying in words and syllables that fit the shape of the melodic forms she had composed.
“I had this weird empty imprint of a melody without words that was asking to be filled with new life,” she says. After composing the music she spent weeks devoted to finding the right words, crafting texts that made sense and elevated the songs. Wittbrodt had clear ideas for what she wanted each song to express, but she now faced another difficult task. “I sat down for two weeks without doing anything else but finding new words that fit in the melodic shapes. I didn’t touch the cello in that time and started dreaming about words during the night. During the day I was constantly searching for words, even while cooking or meeting friends. It became like an addiction.”
Her reasons for calling the project Wearing Words stem primarily from the sensation she had while filling in the melodic shapes with new words in a second language.
“I constantly felt like wearing clothes that don’t belong to me, a bit like borrowing a sweater from your partner or pants from your sister who is slightly taller than you,” says Wittbrodt. But there’s another darker rationale behind the title, where society can become desensitized to once inflammatory words. “Demagogues know about the power of language and use it for their goals. They are also wearing words for a reason they don’t show at first glance.”
Wittbrodt decided to find a vocalist for the project, enlisting Sandro Hähnel, a classically-trained opera singer. She designed the vocal lines for the other songs on the album with him in mind. “I wanted his voice to be fragile and genderless, so I wrote all songs in my vocal range, which is a bit too high for Sandro. That forced him to sing quietly and softly, and brought a color I liked, almost like a countertenor.” His vocals are astonishing, articulating Wittbrodt’s vulnerable melodic shapes with precision, humor, and grace, translating an almost baroque sensibility into pop music terrain, with the sort of pathos one expects from Rufus Wainwright or Anohni.
The cellist enlisted a handful of collaborators to help flesh out the sophisticated arrangements—including the clarinet of Shabnam Parvaresh, the accordion of Tizia Zimmermann, the drums of Jan Philipp and David Helm on harpsichord. Some of the songs feature arresting flurries of improvisation, embroidering the written arrangements with spontaneous accents and interactions forged in the moment.
“Wearing Words” will be released February 3 2026 on Futura Resistenza.
