Kallis Ema: a Musical Easter Celebration

Fareham Gallery in Featherston is excited to host Kallis Ema: A celebration of flowers, fruit, and roots: an exhibition of oil paintings by Astrid Nielsch opening on April 6th from 4 – 6 pm. A long time Featherston resident, Astrid has spent a decade planting a backyard orchard and flower garden, and painting it. Her work lies somewhere between colourful Scandinavian and Eastern European folk art and French Impressionism: Astrid’s plein air paintings are as much a nod to Claude Monet as they are an expression of her whakapapa, which connects her to Estonia, Finland and Ukraine as well as Northern Germany and Denmark. The exhibition is dedicated to the memory of Astrid’s mother Maria Felicitas.

Not just an accomplished artist, Astrid’s professional background is in music performance and academia, as a world-renowned specialist in performance practice on various historical types of harp: After taking a decade-long break from performance, she is ready to resurrect her musical alter ego, Asni the Harper, with a musical Easter celebration on Sunday, 9 April at 3 pm, also at Fareham Gallery.
Astrid will present a programme of medieval music celebrating death and resurrection, and the return of spring after long winter which the festival is so strongly associated with in her part of the world. She has selected religious hymns and secular songs transmitted to us in old European manuscripts before the printing press was invented: some pieces date back to a time before the first people even arrived in Aotearoa. Played on a historically accurate reconstruction of a brass-strung medieval Scottish clarsach, it promises to be an otherworldly experience.

“Researching the past is like travelling to another country”, says Astrid. “Music is such a direct way to communicate with our ancestors and if we travel back far enough in time, before all the technical advancements that made Europe a superpower, we can find more similarities than differences with most other cultures, be they Middle-Eastern or Māori. It’s definitely not all about cute hobbits: my performance is based on rigorous research just as much as artistic intuition, and I hope it contributes to more understanding and tolerance, when the way we practise music today seems to be more about emphasizing differences than our human common ground.”

After a successful international career which took her to New York, London, Rome, Stockholm and Eketahuna, Astrid originally came to New Zealand as an Artist Teacher at Victoria University’s music department, now the New Zealand School of Music. Recently, she was invited to present some of her research at the 47th World Conference of the International Council for Traditional Music in Accra, Ghana: she feels honoured by this opportunity and hopes to pick up where she left off 20 years ago when she came to New Zealand.

Fareham Gallery, part of Fareham Creative Space at 80 Underhill Road in Featherston, is quickly establishing itself as a new hub of the Wairarapa art scene and has recently hosted Sandie Fletcher’s “Menagerie”, closing on 2 April. Kallis Ema: a celebration of flowers, fruit and roots will run through the month of April, the gallery is open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 1 pm – 5 pm or by arrangement. The exhibition opening will take place on Thursday, 6 April from 4 – 6 pm and there will be a musical Easter celebration on Easter Sunday at 3 pm: guests are invited to view the art show after the performance and some traditional Baltic Easter foods will be provided.