Around the corner of Pleasant Street, you’ll find a small gift, called The Gallery @ 57. There are many small gifts such as homemade earrings and soaps that can be found at the Gallery. It's a gift shop that sells and spotlights local artists putting their pieces out to the community. Earlier this week on January 21st, musical artist Chris Ver Voort performed in the lovely shop. A crowd gathered with Chris’s wife, supporting him.
Voort’s music specializes in Acoustic, Electric Folk, funk, Bossa Nova, and ambient meditations. Voort’s music career started when he was young and surrounded by his parent's music at home. “I would say like, from listening to a lot of music from my mom and dad, when I was growing up, like, just Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel and a lot of like, folk and classic rock stuff.”
From his childhood, Ver Voort continued with his passion for music, when he started playing his main instrument, the guitar, in high school. His passion for music continued to grow as years passed, with him finally putting out his music for the first time. “So I just started putting my music on the internet like more official than before. Like I just recently put it on Spotify and YouTube with like an artist name, which is Tiana Italia, which is Spanish it means like, ethereal Earth which is just kind of like a kind of cool cosmic sounding name,” Ver Voort explains.
As the event started, by-passers of the show looked intrigued and took a moment of their day to come listen to Chris. A local bystander mentioned how she enjoyed the event. “Yes it's really enjoyable, I love folk music, and I think it's really nice to the community come together like this.” Ver Voort went through a long series of mainly improv songs along Folk and Bossa Nova. The audience looked intrigued as Chris did improv for an hour straight keeping the crowd interested.
Towards the end of the show, Chris switched to a Bossa Nova, playing “The Girl From Ipanema” by Antonio Carlos Jobim. As he played, Chris sang the lyrics to the song partially in English and partially in Portuguese. “So it wasn't my first time learning a language. But it was the first time like learning it only to sing or only not to really talk to people, just to play music,” Voort mentions. Chris followed by ending his show with another Bossa Nova song sung in Portuguese, this time singing with his wife as he followed singing and played his guitar. This song was by far the crowd favorite with a load of applause following.
In the future, Ver Voortmentions he’d like to explore more with his music. “I do a lot of ambient improvisational stuff and I would like to do more, maybe some jazz or rock genres.” Ver Voortalso mentions an interest in one-day recording in a studio. “I would like to in the future, like to record. I've only recorded in my bedroom, unofficially. So it'd be cool to like to be in a studio.”
You can find Ver Voort’s music on Spotify and YouTube @ Tierra Etèrea. You can also find him on Instagram @cjvervoort.
