Britta Curkovic is stoked about this holiday season.
That’s because it’ll be the first time she’ll hear the sound in her head come alive — in her hometown of Port Moody.
Earlier this year, Curkovic asked Place des Arts faculty teachers Michelle Carlisle (flute) and Lambroula Maria Pappas (soprano) to be part of her new Medieval-Celtic music group called Caelestra.
And on Friday, the trio — along with Sacha Levin (percussion) and Cyrena Huang (cello) — will play Curkovic’s original tunes at a Yuletide show at St. Andrew’s United Church on St. Johns Street.
Though Curkovic’s songwriting only started to flow a few years ago, her musical journey began as a child in a north Ontario cabin.
Her father was a trapper and lived off the land. Seeing his daughter was lonesome, he bought a piano that Curkovic remembers often went out of tune because of the cold climate.
She taught herself how to read musical notation and the first piece she tackled was the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.
“I would play it for hours and hours because, of course, I had no one to play with out there,” Curkovic recalled. “It was just me and my parents.”
The trumpet and recorder came next and, by the time she was old enough to go to school, Curkovic was taking violin lessons with professionals.
At Brandon University, she majored in performance but cut her studies short because of finances and medical issues.
Over-practising got the best of her — “I couldn’t even hold a book,” she said — and tendinitis set in.
She established a career in web design; however, a couple of years ago, Curkovic decided to relaunch her music studies and picked the harp as her instrument.
Songwriting and vocal classes followed quickly afterward.
“It all came back, my passion for music buried all those years,” she said. “Songs just come to me and it’s like this wash of colour and emotion. It’s lines of beautiful music that I hear in my head and I have to get them down.”
Sometimes, the words come first; other times, it’s the music.
Curkovic acknowledges her musical gift but she stresses it takes work.
A band arrangement is usually around 10 to 20 hours to piece together three voices, a flute, cello and drums, for example. But a 10-stanza poem will be wrapped up in under an hour.
Curkovic said she’s been encouraged by the reception of her compositions. Pappas has featured them at her student shows and, next year, will include Caelestra players at her Place des Arts’ faculty event, she said.
Over the past year, Caelestra has played at a Celtic folk music night and the Scandinavian Midsummer Festival in Burnaby, Imaginarius Fantasticus in Vancouver, Silk Purse Art Gallery in West Vancouver and at seniors’ centres.
This and next month, they’ll have two private showings and three public concerts.
And for the Port Moody recital on Nov. 27, Caelestra will donate half of every ticket sold to the charity Beyond Soup and Socks: Housing for All.
• Tickets at $15/$10 are available at Gallagher’s coffee house (232 Newport Dr.), online at caelestra.com or at the door on the night of the show.
