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24 Jul Telluride Chamber Music & Palm Arts: “Love Letters For Vincent,” 7/27!
Telluride Chamber Music and Palm Arts co-present “Love Letters for Vincent,” a multi-art tribute to Van Gogh featuring celebrated local poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and pianist/cultural historian Kayleen Asbo.
Advance tickets: $20/Adults; $10/Students. Tickets on the door: $25/Adults; $15/Students. Tickets are available at telluridechambermusic.org
Go here for more about Telluride Chamber Music.
Go here for more about Palm Arts.
And please scroll down for a preview of the show.
He was a penniless artist haunted by personal demons throughout his short life: poverty, loneliness, mental illness, and unrequited love. Despite the fact he created over 1,000 works, he sold only one painting. No big surprise then that among the themes of the vast body of his art were suffering and alienation. Yet the difficulties he surmounted makes for a fascinating story, one offering solace and hope. And, in the end it is the vitality, freshness and immediacy of Vincent Van Gogh’s work that compels, along with the symbolism of his forms; his pure, bold, bright colors; his strong lines; and thick, emotive brushwork.
Van Gogh was a pioneer of Post-Impressionism, a movement that built on the foundations of Impressionism, but then moved away from its preoccupation with depicting the external world to focus more on the emotive and psychological themes of our inner world. In fact, the iconic artist brought such great emotional depth to painting his influence on modern art is undeniable. Not just illustrative of a scene or a moment, Van Gogh’s images are imbued with his intense emotional response to his subjects.
Well-recognized themes in Van Gogh’s paintings include love, hope, nature, beauty, struggle, and loneliness.
Themes that will resonate at an upcoming event co-sponsored by Telluride Chamber Music and Palm Arts titled ‘Love Letters for Vincent.” The multi-art tribute to Van Gogh features celebrated local poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and pianist/cultural historian Kayleen Asbo.
The backstory on the event is summarized in an essay by Kayleen who honors Van Gogh – as well as Rosemerry.
More Love, More Love
by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
“Sorrow is how we learn to love.”—Rita Mae Brown, Riding Shotgun
If sorrow is how we learn to love,
then let us learn.
Already enough sorrow’s been sown
for whole continents to erupt
into astonishing tenderness.
Let us learn. Let compassion grow rampant,
like sunflowers along the highway.
Let each act of kindness replant itself
into acres and acres of widespread devotion.
Let us choose love as if our lives depend on it.
The sorrow is great. Let us learn to love greater–
riotous love, expansive love,
love so rooted, so common
we almost forget
the world could look any other way.
Where does creativity begin? In one of the biggest projects of my life, the poem above was the first seed. It was planted on May 31, 2020 as I read the daily post sent out by the extraordinary Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. I returned again and again to these words over the hard months of that first pandemic year. Then, last fall, as I stood in front of the paintings of sunflowers, irises and almond blossoms at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the words erupted inside of me.
The sorrow I felt looking at Van Gogh’s last painting – Roots, unfinished because he shot himself later that day- was so intense that I had to do something. What? How could I “choose love” in the face of this long-ago tragedy that began to haunt me? I began to write music: love songs of lamentation for this tragic genius whose art continues to echo across the centuries to open our eyes to wonder and beauty. I wrote and I wrote, each solo piano piece emerging as a response to both Vincent’s life and his art. Quickly the idea sprang up to create a multimedia production, wedding music and image together, that I would offer as a memorial across the centuries to Van Gogh on the anniversary of his death on July 29, 2022.
At some point this spring, I had a deep and moving conversation with Rosemerry and then it occurred to us: she could also write poems in response to both the images Van Gogh painted and the music I had composed. And so a trio was born: a contrapuntal conversation across 130+ years and two continents: musings and meditations on nature, dreams, death, grief and most of all, hope and love…
For “Love Letters for Vincent” Kayleen composed 16 piano pieces inspired by specific works that span Van Gogh’s career; Trommer created poems for each piece. The result? An interdisciplinary tapestry of art, music and poetry that explores not only the artist’s life story, but also belonging, beauty, madness, devotion, loss, a longing to be seen, creativity, gratefulness, how we meet the most difficult moments of our lives, and just how connected our stories really are.
Van Gogh’s paintings will be projected throughout the performance.
The evening begins with a brief art talk by Kayleen and ends with a post-performance conversation and an invitation for audience members to write their own private love letter to Vincent at a cupcake reception.
The reaction from audiences who have been privileged to witnessed the results of this collaboration has been incredibly powerful:
“A completely life-changing experience,” wrote one audience member.
“I have no words for the beauty, power and depth of this masterpiece,” wrote another.
“Kayleen Asbo is a force of nature. She doesn’t just entertain and educate: she actually inspires,” said Alan Silow, President, Santa Rosa Symphony.
“Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is what Rumi called ‘a true human being’ — a person in whose presence pain becomes medicine that awakens us to the effervescence of each moment. And, like Rumi and others in the lineage of embodied mystics, she is firmly rooted in the grief, grit and glory of the everyday. Her poems are a communion beyond words and thoughts. They are a touch from one fallible human to another, in the glow of which we find ourselves less alone, more embodied, and exquisitely ‘attentive/to the syllables of grief, of love within and around us,” Kim Rosen, author of “Saved by a Poem: The Transformative Power of Words.”
‘Love Letters for Vincent,” is an inspirational departure from traditional programming, not just for music-, art- and poetry-lovers, but also for anyone who connects with the deepest human experiences.
About Kayleen:
Kayleen Asbo (piano) is a passionate scholar: a cultural historian, musician, writer and teacher who weaves myth, music, psychology, history and art with experiential learning. A past faculty member of the Pacifica Graduate Institute and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Kayleen also taught for the Osher Life Long Learning Institutes at UC Berkeley, Sonoma State University and Dominican University.
Her classes on a wide array of topics ranging from Depth Psychology to Dante to the History of Classical Music have been hailed as “inspirational,” “fascinating and compelling,” “transformational” and “truly life changing.”
Her favorite description came from an event producer who introduced her as a cross between Joseph Campbell, Leonard Bernstein and Wonder Woman.
Educated at Smith College, Mills College, the San Francisco Conservatory, Pacifica Graduate Institute and the University of California, Kayleen also holds three master’s degrees: one each in music (piano performance), mythology and psychology.
Kayleen has been a guest presenter and lecturer on the intersection of history, mythology, psychology and the arts at Oxford University in England; the Assisi Institute of Depth Psychology Conference in Italy; the Houston Jung Institute; Chartres Cathedral in France; the Cambridge Jung Institute; Grace Cathedral; and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley.
In Pre-Covid times, Kayleen was a pre-concert lecturer for the San Francisco Opera and the music historian in residence for the Santa Rosa Symphony https://www.kayleenasbo.com/
About Rosemerry:
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer (poet) co-hosts “Emerging Form,: a podcast on the creative process); “Secret Agents of Change,” a surreptitious kindness cabal; and “Soul Writers Circle.”
Her poetry has appeared on “A Prairie Home Companion”; PBS News Hour; O Magazine; Rattle.com; “American Life in Poetry”; Carnegie Hall stage; and her daily poetry blog, “A Hundred Falling Veils.”
Since 2006, Rosemerry has been writing a poem a day. Her poetry collections include All the Honey; Hush (winner of the Halcyon Prize); and Naked for Tea (finalist for the Able Muse Book Award).
Her poems are included in the acclaimed anthologies Poetry of Presence; How to Love the World; and The Path to Kindness.
And daily she hosts ‘The Poetic Path” on the Ritual app.
Ropsemerry teaches poetry for parents and scientists, plus mindfulness retreats and kindergarteners.
One-word mantra: Adjust.
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