Filomena Campus Quartet launch their new album THEATRALIA at PizzaExpress Live Chelsea, The Pheasantry, on Tuesday 20 October 2026.

Released on 33Jazz Records, THEATRALIA brings together original compositions where jazz and improvisation meet theatre, poetry and storytelling. Sardinian-born, London-based vocalist, theatre-maker and academic Filomena Campus is joined by long-time collaborators Steve Lodder on piano and keyboards, Charlie Pyne on double bass and voice, and Rod Youngs on drums.

Running through the album is an exploration of female genealogy and vocality, with voices inherited and rediscovered, silenced and reclaimed. The songs encounter women and female figures across different times and cultures, from the Janas of Sardinian tradition and Homer’s Sirens to Italian theatre-maker Franca Rame and the art of Niki de Saint Phalle.

SHE reflects on women, migration and displacement, while the album cover features a portrait of Filomena by Sardinian artist Gina Tondo.

The late Italian writer and satirist Stefano Benni, a close friend and creative collaborator of Campus, is also an important presence on the record. His mixture of satire, comedy and political engagement helped shape Campus’s own approach to performance. Song of a Siren opens with words from Benni’s Sagrademari, while Franca, based on his poem dedicated to Franca Rame and translated and adapted by Campus, incorporates Benni’s own voice from a live London performance with the quartet.

The album also reflects the wider idea behind Theatralia, the theatre company Campus founded in London in 2003, as a shared creative space where different artistic languages can coexist. Its geography stretches between Sardinia and London and beyond. Lead single E MI DROMMIA draws on Sardinian poetry and childhood stories passed from grandmother to granddaughter; Unsettled (Status) is an affectionate and bittersweet love letter to London; and Shanghai to Nanjing grew from a journey through China.

At the centre of THEATRALIA is the long-standing musical relationship between Campus, Lodder, Pyne and Youngs. Lodder composed most of the album’s music, with two compositions by Pyne, alongside songs originating in Campus’s earlier Sardinian collaborations with pianist Paolo Carrus and the late guitarist Massimo Ferra. Years of performing together have allowed the quartet to keep reshaping the music through improvisation, interaction and exchange with audiences.

The quartet formed in 2010 and has performed at venues including Ronnie Scott’s, PizzaExpress Jazz Club and the Vortex, as well as internationally across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.