Tunesmith Night, Saturday, February 10, 2024, 7pm PST
Odd Fellows Hall, 105 NE First Street, Enterprise, Oregon
The Wallowa Valley Music Alliance continues the 18th season of Tunesmith Night, a showcase of original music. The concert features three songwriters sharing their original work in a round-robin format, at the historic Enterprise Odd Fellows Hall. The unique listening space provides an up-close and intimate experience for both audience and performers.
The Saturday, February 10 concert features Marika Straw, Amy Fairchild and Seth Kinzie. Doors open at 6:30pm with music starting at 7pm. Admission is $10. Drink service provided.
More on the songwriters below:
Marika Straw
Marika Straw is a queer singer-songwriter and community organizer from Wallowa County, Oregon. Their intimate songs for piano and voice, somewhere in the realm of indie/jazzy/bluesy/art pop, have been described as “the sound of naked emotion.”
Marika’s musical career and influences have spanned jazz piano and voice, classical piano, church organ, and Indian drumming. They love to weave music and social change work through endeavors such as an ethnomusicology project on drumming and social change in India, co-creating and leading a songwriting course at a women’s prison in North Carolina, and elevating queer stories through song in rural spaces.
Marika’s musical honors include playing pipe organ on the Bach Vespers Series at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in NYC, performing a piano concerto with the Salem Pops Orchestra, and winning second place in the Brown Bag Songwriting Competition in Asheville, NC.
You can find their single, “Waiting,” almost anywhere you can find music, and you can find more on their website, https://marikastrawmusic.com/.
Amy Fairchild
Amy Fairchild is a composer, pianist, vocalist, and music educator. She is an ASCAP recording artist and has released two albums of her piano compositions: “Serendipities” (2021) and “Beneath the Surface” (2022). Her international debut as a composer/performer was at the International Composers Festival in the United Kingdom in 2022. Amy’s catalog of popular works for piano are available on her website, www.amyfairchildmusic.com.
Amy has her B.A. in Music Theory/Composition from Linfield University. Her background in music is diverse, including classical vocal and piano performance, jazz and chamber choirs, musical theater, teaching general classroom music/ukulele, and private piano lessons. She is also on the board of the Wallowa Valley Music Alliance and directs their youth musical theatre program. Composing musicals for kids and composing solo piano music are her deepest passions.
When not composing, performing, or teaching, you can find Amy trail-running, hiking, or backpacking with her husband and their two young sons in the beautiful Wallowa Mountains where they are lucky enough to live.
Seth Kinzie
Seth Kinzie is a contemporary piano composer from Joseph, Oregon. Inspired by the surreal impressions of Claude Debussy and the wild, jazzish voicings of modern post-rock, Seth has developed his own style of instrumental tone poems that he calls “euphoric nature music.” He currently writes and records with Kinzie Steele Quartet, an acoustic piano, guitar, drums & percussion collective lauded for their dynamic live performances. He was mentored by renowned choral composer Shawn Kirchner. He also acts as the Director for Josephy Fest and recently finished two years of travels through Ethiopia, Somalia, Uganda, and Malawi on a Peacebuilding post-graduate fellowship.