{"id":162713,"date":"2026-04-10T21:18:50","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T21:18:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/162713\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T21:18:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T21:18:50","slug":"pull-up-a-chair-for-perera-elsewhere-the-lafayette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/162713\/","title":{"rendered":"Pull up a chair for Perera Elsewhere \u2013 The Lafayette"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sasha<\/a> <\/p>\n

Sasha Perera has been playing the trumpet since she was 11 years old. (Photo courtesy of Ableton)<\/p>\n

Trekking from Berlin to Lafayette College for an upcoming performance, award-winning auteur Sasha Perera stresses the importance of imperfection \u2014 and the trumpet.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe trumpet is a pure religion,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perera is a London-born, Berlin-based experimental electronic producer and songwriter who releases under the pseudonym of Perera Elsewhere. Despite her diverse selection of instruments \u2014 piano, guitar, Indian violin and trumpet \u2014 she values the freedom to experiment that electronic music provides.<\/p>\n

\u201cI call them sound UFOs,\u201d she said. \u201cYou don\u2019t know what they are, so I can turn my voice into something totally different.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Perera, the important thing isn\u2019t perfection, but the creative process itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cStuff like error and coincidence and chance is a really beautiful thing in making music,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of that anti-perfection thesis. Everyone who you really respect musically, they\u2019ve got hard drives of terrible music \u2014 terrible, awful music.\u201d<\/p>\n

After university, Perera moved to Berlin at 22 to pursue a career in music, much to the dismay of her loved ones.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was basically a one-way ticket to extinction, so that also made it more attractive,\u201d she explained. \u201cI ran away to Berlin, where there was no internet, and they couldn\u2019t call you and say, \u2018What did you do, did you get a job today?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Since then, Perera has released four studio albums, with her most recent, \u201cJust Wanna Live Some,\u201d released last October and expanding on her sound.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s more trumpet on this album than any other album,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Ahead of her performance at the end of this week, Perera hosted multiple workshops and a lecture, passing down expertise to students of any skill level, with the willingness to open their ears.<\/p>\n

\"\"Perera helped students make their own beats in a workshop on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just loved how she emphasized that you don\u2019t have to be an instrumentalist to make music,\u201d workshop attendee Oliver Dabiri \u201827 said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of people out there who have listened to music for so long and can recognize patterns and beats without knowing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrew Madera Pineda \u201827, who already DJs, attended the same workshop and said he gleaned a lot from it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know how to use a sample before and make it into beats, and that was really fun to learn,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

While this was most students\u2019 introduction to Perera\u2019s work, some had heard the noise from across the water.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d seen her boiler room set on YouTube,\u201d Emily Finkelshteyn \u201829 said. \u201cIt made me feel a lot better that she was talking about, you don\u2019t have to, per se, know technology to pursue music. It\u2019s more about if you just like music, that\u2019s enough too.\u201d<\/p>\n

For those interested in Perera\u2019s work, she\u2019ll be taking over Buck Hall for an atmospheric DJ set on Saturday night at 8 p.m., free for Lafayette students and $33 for the public.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sasha Perera has been playing the trumpet since she was 11 years old. (Photo courtesy of Ableton) Trekking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162714,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":["post-162713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}