“Love Letters For Vincent”: Missed it? Loved It? Another Chance to Watch Breathtaking Performance!

15 Sep “Love Letters For Vincent”: Missed it? Loved It? Another Chance to Watch Breathtaking Performance!

On 7/27, Telluride Chamber Music and Palm Arts co-presented “Love Letters for Vincent,” a multi-art tribute to Van Gogh featuring celebrated local poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and pianist/cultural historian Kayleen Asbo.

The duo is in fundraising mode to take this project forward.

Donate here through gofundme.

A note from Kayleen follows, along with a video of their performance below (with thanks to Dean Rolley).

Hello! I am Kayleen Asbo, a cultural historian, teacher, pianist and composer. I am collaborating with my beloved friend, poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. We are raising funds to create both an audio recording and a video of “Love Letters to Vincent,” a multimedia production which pairs 18 original solo piano compositions written by me in response to Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings and life with the heart-opening poems Rosemerrry penned listening to my music and reading about Van Gogh in the year following her son’s suicide.

We want to share our love of Van Gogh’s art with the world–and even more, to invite people into a journey that takes us through loss and despair to hope and love.

Thanks to initial donations, we were able to meet in person in California (where Kayleen lives) in October 2022 and film our first performance of our collaboration.

We submitted this video to Telluride Chamber Music who sponsored our next performance in July of 2024 in Colorado. Thanks to the second wave of donations, we were able to film the version you see here – a performance that was hailed as “the most extraordinarily moving musical experience ever” by audience members.

We are now raising funds for the final phase of our project which involves: 1) transcribing the musical score so that other people can learn to place the pieces themselves on the piano 2) Digitally mastering the audio recordings of both a solo piano album and a music+ spoken word recording.

We are so grateful for your financial support. Equally important to us is spreading the word and helping us to share it in person. If you have contacts with music or poetry festivals, museums or art therapy programs for the mentally ill, write us! We would love to present this program in person again where it is most relevant and needed