Chamber music group Agarita plans to celebrate poetry at the Radius Center on Friday, and violist Marisa Bushman said safety would be front-and-center at this concert.
"We’re going to be limiting to 25% capacity of the Radius Center, which is maximum 100 people. When our seats are filled up, our doors are closed," she said.
They are not just limiting the number of people. They will be directing them too.
“They’ll enter one way, and exit the other. It’ll be very organized and safe with a good six feet of social distance between everyone involved,” Bushman explained.
Agarita regularly joins its music with art from other disciplines, and each of Friday night’s 6 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. shows will do just that.
“Agarita’s going to be pairing with San Antonio poet laureate Andrea Vocab Sanderson. She’s going to be reading some of her poetry before we play certain pieces,” Bushman said.
At Agarita’s request, Sanderson wrote a few new pieces after being presented with musical selections.
“She wrote a few haikus that will go with Paul Wiancko’s American Haiku which is three movements, so there are three haikus,” Bushman said. “She’ll also be singing her song Noveaux with us. She sings and raps her poetry with it, and Troy Peters made the arrangement for it."
(Troy Peters is Youth Orchestras of San Antonio’s Musical Director.)
Agarita will also stream the 8:30 p.m. concert at agarita.org.
“It’s a really eclectic program, but it’s very, very powerful,” she said.
