Saturday, 09 September 2006
House Concert: Kim Angelis

“In the best of Gypsy fashion, Kim Angelis can change before your eyes. This internationally acclaimed composer and violin virtuoso is often described as “transforming 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 heels. She is the composer and performer of an international range of pieces written for specific stories and, like Vivaldi, paints the story with surprising color and detail. While her roots are from the University of California, Irvine, her violin plays like Paganini.” (Clancy Hughes, Inflection Point)

“What we now commonly think of as Eastern European ‘Gypsy’ music was actually the folk music of that region, kept alive by Rom musicians,” says Angelis. “So... I have taken the varied influences of classical music, flamenco music, and Eastern European folk music, and tried to combine them into a homogenous style of my own. A rather ‘Gypsy-esque’ thing to do, yes?”  Drawing on these rich traditions, Kim has enthralled concert audiences from Ancud, Chile, to Alaska and over the seas to Asia with her dazzling virtuosity and exuberant stage presence.  “Kim IS her music! Tuck a violin under her chin and this otherwise slight and shy artist becomes a powerful, scintillating dancing presence, somewhere on the continuum between the spirituality of a fiddler on the roof and the ecstatic mysticism of a Sufi dancing.” ( Len Atkins, Sou’westerings)

After graduating Magna Cum Laude from UCI, Kim met and later married guitarist Josef Gault (aka “The Wild Hungarian”), who accompanies her at every concert. Beautiful, historic Astoria on the Oregon coast, is the place Kim calls home - it is the rich source of her serenity and inspiration.   

7:30pm at Brookhaven Lodge.