Talk to Lara St. John about her upcoming concert in New Hope, and she is just as likely to drift to topics as diverse as a Chagall exhibit she recently attended in Montreal, her experience of playing the score for “The Red Violin” (by her friend, composer John Corigliano) live with the film, and editing videos like “Bar Fight” and “The Kosher Chicken Dance” for her YouTube channel.
As serious artists go, St. John is refreshingly unpretentious and occasionally even a bit geeky. She is well enough versed in “Star Wars” and “The Lord of the Rings” to pepper her conversation with references to AT-ATs and dragons. Her record label, Ancalagon, is named for a pet iguana (now deceased), which in turn was named for a creature in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Silmarillion.”
St. John likes to keep it interesting, and she likes to have fun. When she plays, she is often very spontaneous, and she always goes for broke.
The Lambertville-based Riverside Symphonia will host St. John and her frequent partner, the pianist Matt Herskowitz, for a recital at St. Martin of Tours Church in New Hope on Mar. 10 at 8 p.m. On the first half of the program will be sonatas by Beethoven and César Franck.
The second half of the concert will be made up of special arrangements made for her from material largely collected by her from Yiddish, Macedonian, Israeli, Armenian, and Hungarian sources. These showpieces form the basis of her most recent album, “Shiksa.”
Capturing St. John in print is always a challenge. Read my most recent attempt in today’s Trenton Times.
http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2017/03/classical_music_lara_st_john_p.html
