“I try to be very honest in all my music. I don’t lie,” laughs singer/songwriter Ava Della Pietra, going on to explain, “I try to be very authentic in my songwriting process… I feel like it’s easier for people to connect with me that way.” The 19-year-old (She recently wrapped her freshman year at Harvard/Berklee College of Music.) burgeoning pop sensation has been releasing music since 2019 (although she’s been writing since she was 10), but that wasn’t her first time in the spotlight. In her younger years, Ava Della Pietra starred in the original Broadway cast of School of Rock. We’re chatting via phone, in late June, as she prepares to embark on three dates opening for Madilyn Mei in late July/early August, including a Thursday, August 1st date at The Foundry at The Fillmore. And she tells me she’s become a fast fan of the indie singer/songwriter, who she feels to be a kindred spirit: “I’ve definitely been following her on Instagram and TikTok and she seems like a very genuine person, very down to Earth, which is what I appreciate.”
I ask Ava how she decided music and performance were what she wanted to dedicate her life to, and she recalls a very specific event: “I performed the national anthem at a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden when I was 12 or 13. And there’s this big clock that counts down to how many minutes and seconds are left before the game, but also to my performance. And I don’t get nerves, but watching that actually gave me nerves, but then when it counted down to 3, and then 2, and then 1, all my nerves went away, and that’s when I knew this was something that I could do and that I wanted to do.”
Last month Ava Della Pietra released her latest single, “rearview mirror,” a sass pop banger that immediately spiked a 156% increase in her Spotify listeners and whose music has currently garnered 423,000 views on YouTube. “It’s really fun to experiment with different styles. With my latest one, I was really going for something,” she tells me of the track. When I ask her the origins of the song, she explains, “The inspiration for that song was that I had this guy friend who had been giving me mixed signals, and there was this one day when I was in the car with him, and his girlfriend, who was in the front seat, but he kept looking back at me in the rearview mirror… So, it’s about that, but also wanting to put him and that relationship in the rearview mirror, in the past, and stick up for her.”
When I inquire about any albums that have had a particularly significant influence on Ava, she tells me one of them is quite recent. “Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts (Spilled)! I loved all those songs, which have so much more variety,” she says of the deluxe edition of Olivia Rodrigo’s sophomore effort, while also citing Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft and Alec Benjamin mixtape Narrated for You (which she used as the subject for a high school project) as favorites. And Ava’s affection for Rodrigo doesn’t stop at the music: “Before I go into a photo shoot or video shoot, I always give my stylist, whoever it is, Olivia Rodrigo pictures [laughs].” However, she also admits that someone she knows a little more intimately also has a big influence on her sartorial style: “My mom’s really good at a bunch of random things, like interior design and style, so I always have her help me and I always have her buy my clothes [laughs].”
Ava even mentions Rodrigo when I ask about her transition from Broadway to singing/songwriting: “I always have to think about how I want to sing a song when I write it. Broadway has a huge emphasis on diction, since you’re telling a story… and with pop music you don’t really do that. Like, it would be weird to hear Olivia Rodrigo doing that.” She also tells me that the transition has changed her approach to performing: “When it comes to performance, with Broadway, you never really wanna break the fourth wall.” However, she admits that she does still regularly draw comparisons to one particular singer/songwriter-turned-Broadway star: “People always tell me I sound like Sara Bareilles, who starred in and wrote the music for Waitress.”
Her August 1st gig at The Foundry won’t be Ava Della Pietra’s first show in the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection, whose Wawa Welcome America she played in 2020, which she remembers fondly: “Whenever I’ve had to travel for a performance, even if it’s just one day, it feels very tour-like.” When I ask what can be expected of her live show on this actual mini-tour, she says, “It’s going to be acoustic, and it’ll be a lot of fun, all original songs. I’ll probably have a guitarist with me…” And while Ava will be back at Harvard/Berklee in the near future, she tells me that there are definitely more planned releases: “I did just recorded another single in LA, and I have a few more in the bag… I’m going to release some acoustic tracks, maybe a short acoustic album with stripped back versions of a few of my songs.”
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