Gypsy Violin

Gypsy Violin

Last night I was privileged to listen to a beautiful violin in an interment art gallery and a crowded but small group. The acoustics were superb, no electronic distortion, just pure violin not twenty feet away. Kim Angelis was the performer, with extraordinary skill, Gypsy dance, hard heals on a wooden floor and accompanied by Josef Gault, her husband, with the guitar.

The Bunnell St. Gallery sits in an old hardware store, an original Homer, Alaska building along the waterfront of the old town. The gallery was restored by Asia and Curt Marquardt as a B&B with the gallery on the main floor. I lived there for a few weeks when I first came to Homer, so it is a special place to me, but it is more than that. The Gallery has become a world-class venue of the arts and host to international performers who seem to relish the intimacy, acoustics and the reception they receive in Homer.

Kim transforms herself from a soft-spoken, modest and spiritual person into a wild creature of the violin with flying skirts and hair, a few broken bowstrings and stomping heals. She is the composer and the performer with an international range of pieces written for specific stories and, like Vivaldi; paint the story with surprising color and detail. While her roots are from the University of California, Irvine, her violin plays like Paganini.

I don’t think there is another place in the world where one can experience this kind of chamber music in this kind of setting with this high quality of performance.