Chakra Kahn at the Timucua White House.

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Chakra Kahn (Alexandra Love) was performing with Beautiful Chorus and special guest Emily Fontano at the Timucua White House, (2000 S Summerlin Ave Orlando, FL 32806). The music had a deep, personal writing style, along with eccentric cadences and lush harmonies. In concert with DiViNCi’s vast, poly-rhythmic, orchestral soundscapes is perfectly matched. Together, their sound is like smooth electricity, an intense, bass-rich, melodic wind. Their newest album, The Cope Aesthetic, which was released June 3, 2017, is a more jazz-inspired, electronic soundscape than anything else the group has created thus far. She explained on stage that she lost her hair at a very early age, and came to realize that how she looks to other does not define who she is.

Amazingly on the evening of the Pulse nightclub tragedy, Chakra Kahn performed a piece titled Pulse at the venue. The lyrics seemed to eerily predict the events that was about to happen. “Their is a Pule and its fading, but we claim we are still alive.”

Elizabeth St. Hilaire was the visual artist working on stage during the performance. Elizabeth usually works with collage but this evening the was painting with acrylics. The painting depicted a female sun bather from perhaps the 1920s. She swayed to the music clearly inspired by the music.

Wekiva Paint Out.

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At the end of February and the first week of March, 29 artists created plein air paintings at the Wekiva Island Paint Out. I went on the evening of a night paint out to watch the artists at work. Wekiva Island (1014 Miami Springs Dr, Longwood, FL 32779), has a a bar called the Tooting Otter. A band was setting up as I arrived inside the bar,  and I decided this was a perfect sketch opportunity. Plein air painter Barbara set up her easel between the bar stool I was sitting on and the stage. I sketched the room as she got the easel in place. Since she predominated the scene I included her in the sketch.

Barbara focused on a close up painting of the performers. A game of Jenga was stacked up on the table in front of Barbara. In Jenga, you have to remove a wooden block from the stack, without letting the entire structure fall down. The fiddling and guitar music added to the festive evening. Barbara was a bit distracted. I stopped sketching after the first set and I think she got more work done during the performer’s second set.

I later learned that she was a bit uncomfortable with my being at the bar and sketching. She had the strange notion that I was copying her painting. I really didn’t pay attention to her work in progress. My back was against the bar, so there was no opportunity to back away from her work in progress. We joked about the difficulty of working in a tight space and parted ways on decent terms. I later saw her finished painting in the wet gallery where it hung with all the other paintings completed at the paint out.

My favorite work in the wet gallery was by Elizabeth St. Hilaire who does collages instead of plein air paintings. Her pieces were mostly of palm trees executed with colorful strips of paper. seeing all the variety of work created on the one week was in itself exciting. Outside artists were doing nocturnes of the riverfront. One artist had Christmas lights wrapped all around his easel which acted as his working lights. That was a sketch opportunity, and perhaps Ill catch him at work next year.

The Timucua Arts white house.

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Nora Lee Garcia, performed on flute
and Rene Izquierdo, performed on guitar at the Timucua Arts white house (2000 S Summerlin Ave, Orlando, Florida 32806) on Sunday January 8th, 2017.  The featured visual artist live painting was Elizabeth St. Hilaire.

The program
included: 

Suite Buenos Aires by Maximo Diego Pujol (1957- )

I- Pompeya
II-Palermo
III-San Telmo
IV-Micro Centro

Musiques Populaires Brésiliennes by Celso Machado (1953- )

Sambosa
Algodao Doce
Pe De Moleque
Piazza Vittorio

Ave Maria by Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992)

Hasta Alicia Baila by Eduardo Martin (1956- )

and History of Tango by Astor Piazzolla

It was fun watching Elizabeth paint to the music in her bright pink socks and shoes. Her work was spot lit around the room. The canvas was prepped with a faint collage of hand written letters, and she painted a 1920’s era bathing beauty. After the concert people crowded around the entry table to sip wine and the potluck snacks. The White House is one place in Orlando that truly fosters a sense of artist: community. The number of concerts keeps growing now that Benoit Glazer has retired from his musical director position at Cirque du Soleil. There is now member ship options that can be bought. Members get to enter the venue first and there are other perks around town.

A Russian Christmas.

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On December 11th, the Maitland, Presbyterian Church (341 N Orlando Ave, Maitland, FL 32751) presented A Russian Christmas. Russia is well known for producing talented composers like Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev. This concert presented sounds of the holiday season with a Russian flair. June Flowers, who organizes music a presentations around Central Florida, asked me to come and sketch the performance. June introduced me to Elizabeth St. Hilaire who is a visual artist and also a violin player. I made sure to get Elizabeth’s pinch hair in the sketch. 

The Artistic Director and Conductor was Eric W. Mendez. Most arrangements were purely instrumental, but Cantique de Noel featured soprano Laura Bertshinger. Her performance elicited a standing oration. The Emcees for the night were Sent in a columnist Scott Maxwell, and Margaret Patten. Scott mentioned an article he had just written about 101 of the things that make Central Florida unique. I had just read that article and pulled it out of the paper because it contained so many sketch opportunities.  That article listen the Maitland Symphony Orchestra as one of the unique 101 gems. 

The concert was free, but of course donations were encouraged. This concert was certainly a way to warm up to the Christmas season. I slipped away during A Christmas Festival by Leroy Anderson. I wanted to avoid the crush of the crowd when the concert ended.