By Julianne Homokay
Special to the Alpine Mountaineer
Back in January, a unique concert took place at at Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church in Lake Arrowhead featuring a talented and versatile soprano, Kirsten Ashley Wiest.
Wiest and her pianist, Todd Moellenberg, had presented the program at Boston Court down in Pasadena. As Wiest’s son is in Mt. Calvary’s pre-school, she and Moellenberg approached the church about re-mounting the concert up here on the mountain. With a little help from the Arrowhead Arts Association, where Wiest is a fairly new board member, they made the concert happen on Jan. 18. Close to 40 mountain residents had the opportunity to enjoy classics sung in many languages as well as Wiest’s personal passion: selections from the contemporary classical canon.
Music has been a part of Wiest’s lifelong journey. “My grandmother started me on piano when I was 5,” she said, and she considers herself lucky that her first teacher didn’t try to streamline her only toward the classics. “While my friends were learning Bach and Beethoven, I was working on composers who are still alive.”
Wiest in performance
Judging by the turnout at their concert, Wiest has hope that there could be an enthusiastic audience for new works on the mountain. “You would think that audiences would only show up for the classics, but that’s not true!” She’s encountered way more of a reception up here than down in Los Angeles, which she attributes partly to option fatigue in a huge city like L.A. “Down there, they just don’t notice it.” But it’s all part of a personal goal of hers “to bring that perception down to earth. The term ‘classical music’ can be scary or off-putting; it doesn’t have to be that way.”
Part of the formula: “Don’t be afraid to take kids to concerts. Expose them to music.” She also encourages people, especially her students, to follow their joy in life. “If you want to play music, just do it! Don’t worry about sounding like a virtuoso.”
Wiest with Todd Moellenberg
Her personal goals are very much reflected in her teaching philosophy. At UC Riverside, San Bernardino Valley College and her personal voice studio, where she teaches everything from basic music appreciation to vocal masterclasses, opera workshops and private voice lessons, she strives to “teach the entire person. I believe that learning is about communication and experimentation through a lens of enjoyment, and do my best to dissolve stress, anxiety, doubt and fear from the mind of every student that walks through my door,” as she states on her website. She laments the damage that pedants can do to students in classical disciplines. “The PTSD you can carry!” she laughed.
Among other personal goals, she would like to travel more to perform, which she will soon be doing to sing modern composer Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierre Lunaire, a piece for a female vocalist and a six- to seven-instrument chamber ensemble. This performance will be held at the University of Texas at Arlington.
Wiest is from Texas, where she grew up in the Dallas area, but she escaped to Southern California “as soon as I could,” landing at Chapman University for her undergraduate degree, Cal Arts for her master’s and UC San Diego for her doctorate. After she and her husband lived at first in Topanga Canyon, then in Mount Baldy, as “we’re definitely nature people,” they found their way to the mountain in 2017.
“It’s been a warm welcome,” she said.
For more information on Wiest, visit her website at kirstenashleywiest.com.
0 Comments