“Tears blurred my vision as I performed Fauré’s Elegy alone in the living room of my family’s summer cabin. I had just heard the news of my grandfather’s passing, and I was pouring my sorrow and anger at the loss of so much history and memory into the dramatic fast notes leading to the piece’s climax. My spirit wailed through this phrase, only calming into quiet resignation as I completed the final bittersweet melody. This was my private memorial to my mother’s parents, both now gone” — Carter Dewberry
Part I
Sometimes you can tell, even in the embryonic stages, that a professional relationship is going to click.
Carter Dewberry’s mere name created that effect the first time it arrived, electronically, in this office last spring. A multi-dimensional young woman who is a self-designed classical musician, she was announcing a concert date. But there was something about the spare message that innocently asked, “Don’t you want to know more?”
An accomplished cellist, comfortable with numerous genres, she performs, she thinks and she writes with a delicious, esoteric but almost austere blend of elegance and fragility that bespeaks a vast, shadowed room, illumined only by a slender shaft of sunlight that reveals a single musician seated, softly, silently, by her instrument.
Even if no two of this newspaper’s roster of regular essayists are alike, Ms. Dewberry, all the more, is sui generis. Resolute, fiercely independent, imaginative.
Judging by the tone of her sparely, but compellingly drawn Tuesday essays, Ms. Dewberry craves nothing more than roaming at will, probably solitarily, to explore the landscapes of her mind.
Once again it is concert time for Ms. Dewberry, next Saturday evening at the Yost Theatre in Santa Ana (Origins CDs — http://www.carterdewberry.com), but this is an attempt to acquaint you with Ms. Dewberry, the thinking person’s essayist.
The eldest of three siblings, her sister is Erica and her brother is Seth. But she gained the winning name combination in her family, “Carter Dewberry,” which she attributes to having creative parents. Turns out , though, that “Carter” came from her godmother. It almost became a victim of late 1970s’ politics. “My (conservative) father wanted to change my name after President Carter came to the White House,” she says.
Tall, slim and willowy, you might suspect that Ms. Dewberry came of age in a proper, sedate home where classical music wafted through the well-appointed rooms. Eventually perhaps, but her earliest years were spent on Chicago’s often raucous South Side before the family moved to a leafier community north of the city.
She did not find her way to Los Angeles until after her undergraduate days at Western Michigan. She continued, of course, to return to the Middle West for holidays with the family — “until one year I got stuck on the runway, by the weather, at Christmastime. That was it. I said ‘I am not coming home anymore.’” Shortly afterward, her family, incrementally, began moving west.
Whether in the blue collar Middle West or avante garde West Coast, she has cultivated a lifelong love for music, nurtured first by her parents, but not for long. It wasn’t necessary.
Ms. Dewberry explored the wider world until she was 7 years old when she prevailed upon her parents — not the traditional other way — to study music. “I badgered them,” she said, “until they gave in. I had always loved the piano. I love the sound of it. My mother played, my grandmother played. But my mother said before I could take lessons, I had to learn how to read really well. I did, and I was able to start taking lessons when I was 7.”
Not that her musical life evolved in a harmonious straight line. “I grew up listening to heavy metal and classical,” she says, “probably more heavy metal.”
Just as with humans, a love affair with a genre of music or an instrument, blossoms with discrete bursts. Classical themes satisfied her appetite until she was 12 years old when she pushed it slightly aside, while searching for something else fulfilling that never quite came along. She tried tae kwando. She rode horses, but the right something was elusive.
(To be continued)
Finally, here is Ms. Dewberry talking about next Saturday’s special concert:
The Next Chapter: Saturday, Jan. 16, 9 p.m., at the Yost Theatre, downtown Santa Ana
By Carter Dewberry
[img]541|left|Carter Dewberry||no_popup[/img] After years of trying on different labels, I have finally realized that the form of my music (style, genre, etc.) is less important to me than the feelings it evokes in listeners.
In the last four months, I have climbed peaks, meditated for days in solitude, wept in the shadows of grief and uncertainty, and danced in appreciation of the infinite beauty contained in a spectacular meal, gorgeous flower or adoring gaze from my partner.
In each of these (as with all) experiences, I focus on feeling what comes to the surface as well as what lies beneath, whether it be beautiful or terrifying. For when I allow myself to feel unconditionally, I accept myself unconditionally.
This is the first step towards living in my utmost joy, which is connection – to myself, nature, and my family, friends, and community.
Now that I have spent months alone translating these feelings into music, it is time to re-establish my connection with the world. As such, I need your help.
I want to know how these moments, exposed through my music as catchy riffs, mournful laments, and passionate tangos, MOVE YOU.
Please join me as I share the beauty of this journey on Jan. 16. And afterwards, please dare to share with me your feelings, the good and the ugly.
I am here to listen.
You Need to Know
Saturday, Jan. 16 – 9 p.m.* (the show will begin promptly)
The Yost Theater, 307 N. Spurgeon St., Santa Ana, 92701
Tickets available at www.yosttheater.com ($10/$6 students)
*Performing in conjunction with L.A. Electric 8
