World Class Performances at Blue!

September~First Friday

Poet Shana Ritter  and Harpist Amanda Jensen!

Amanda brought her great big incredibly beautiful 1935 harp, (That's real gold on it!) it took four of us to wrestle it gently up the stairs! (Thanks to Al Jarvis and Rob Westcott, BTW) And we were transfixed, transported to what one listener described as an entree into Bach's chamber! We discovered that music sounds really excellent in here at the BlueStudioGallery- the shape of the room, the acoustic tiles on the ceiling, the smooth floors and lovely blue color tone that you can almost hear. All of this contrives to create a vibrancy that is alive and intent on pervading even the most stubborn of moments between ears and hearts.  Ear is of course, the very center, the punctum, of the word heart, as well as beginning with the directive, Hear!!  The art of hearing is the true subject of the heart!

We were enraptured! Amanda promised to return and grace us with another of her beautiful instruments, a smaller Baroque Harp!

 

Both performances were stellar, with Shana reading from her recent publication,  Stairs of Separation,

 from Finishing Line Press in Georgetown Kentucky, a grant-funded project to create a collection of poetry about her family's immigration to America, her heritage, and in particular, her vision of her mother's heart. We were stirred by the integrity of phrases that formed pictures in our minds of both her mother's experience and the poet's lens through which we were given the opportunity to glimpse a personal world heretofore unknown to us. Here's a tiny peek at Shana's poetry- hopefully, she will return and read to us again!

"Not much else would she say. The tumult of New York must have washed it away, leaving anything from before lingering, a faint scent, a box left wrapped and tied."

excerpt: Memory , p. 13

from Stairs of Separation

by Shana Ritter