Joy of Creating

Pianist Marja J. Kaisla and photographer Kathie Dacey come together in Yardley, Pa.

By: Jodi Thompson

Pianist Marja Kaisla

   New Year’s resolution-makers take heed: Pianist Marja J. Kaisla believes in aiming high.
   "Music is the one thing that can show the beautiful and wonderful side of human existence," she says. "A culture cannot survive and develop without the arts."
   No one could accuse Ms. Kaisla, who performs at the Lower Makefield Township Building Jan. 6, of not following her own advice about setting lofty goals, far above the mundane.
   The Finland native has been surrounded by the arts since she was very young. She began playing the piano at age three and was performing by age five. Ms. Kaisla attended the Sibelius Academy of Music, Helsinki University and spent several years studying at the Leningrad Conservatory in Russia.
   She came to Philadelphia more than ten years ago to study under Susan Starr and stayed, eventually opening her own school, the Delaware Valley Conservatory of Music. The school serves 100 students in three locations, teaching voice and instrumental music to all ages.
   That isn’t nearly enough to keep Ms. Kaisla busy. In addition to running the conservatory and cultivating her own solo performing career here and in Europe, Ms. Kaisla teaches at Immaculata College in Chester County and is writing a reference book.

Photographs by Kathie Dacey: Above, "Blue Moo," Photoshop image on watercolor paper.

Below, a dream-like environmental portrait on watercolor paper.

   The book is intended to assist piano instructors in choosing appropriate material for beginning students. Evidently, there is a lot of published material out there for such a cause.
   "It’s a pretty overwhelming project," she says, "but somebody has to do it."
   On top of all that, Ms. Kaisla oversees a summer music festival and camp in Nova Scotia.
   "It keeps me pretty busy," she says.
   Not busy enough to keep the Philadelphia resident from sharing music from some of the greatest composers for the keyboard with Bucks Countians. Ms. Kaisla will perform four sonatas by Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti and one sonata by Franz Josef Haydn. Both Baroque pieces were originally written for the harpsichord.
   She will also perform a piece by the French composer Maurice Ravel and a selection with a French title by a Russian, Sergei Prokofiev, "Visions Fugitives."
   Ms. Kaisla will complete the performance with selections from Polish composer Frederic Chopin, and intends to give an overview of piano technique and how it has developed from mid-1600s to the early 20th century.
   "It will show how composers use the instrument to reflect their own ideas and thoughts about their feelings and emotions of what music can bring to people’s lives," she says.
   Don’t expect to be left to your own devices to figure it all out. Ms. Kaisla will lead the way with dialogue between each composition.
   "I tell what’s been going on in my mind while listening and practicing the music," she says. "Classical music has totally different rules than popular music."
   Pop music has instantaneously recognizable rhythms and tunes. Classical music, she says, works in a wholly dissimilar way.
   "A composer needs time to develop his ideas and thoughts," Ms. Kaisla says.
   The performer can explain the process to the listener, she says, to make listening to classical music much more interesting. It is a dialogue between composer and audience, with the pianist as translator.
   "That’s my life’s mission: to make people know this world because it can be a different dimension altogether," Ms. Kaisla says.
   Just don’t expect her to allow classical music to be relegated to mood music. She believes it should never be played as background music.
   "Classical music has so much to say and it demands the listeners attention," Ms. Kaisla says, "so to use it as elevator music doesn’t do justice to it."
   Be certain to arrive early and stay late, as Ms. Kaisla’s performance is not the only offering from Lower Makefield Society for the Performing Arts on Jan. 6. Master photographer Kathie Dacey will be displaying some of her work, as well. The Wrightstown resident operates a portrait business and gets creative in her spare time.

Photographs by Kathie Dacey: Above, "Tuscani," sepia-tone print.

Below, an untitled beach scene on watercolor paper.

   The exhibition will include photographs taken locally as well as inIreland, Switzerland and Italy. She will also be showing several infrared pieces; it is an old process using black-and-white film colored with sepia tones. The results are eerily beautiful.
   Her color photographs have a painterly quality, produced through digital Photoshop manipulations. She then prints them on watercolor paper for an unusual effect.
   "It gives them more of an ethereal painting look," she says, "even though they start out as photographs.
   "This is all because I can’t draw. I’m always trying to find ways to make things look like paintings."
   Ms. Dacey is a frustrated painter. She attended art classes at Bucks County Community College only to discover she wasn’t good at drawing. She switched to photography and uncovered her talent. Working in a photography booth at the mall didn’t even chase her from the profession. It only strengthened her resolve.
   After finishing her degree, Ms. Dacey apprenticed at Whipps Studio in Bristol before starting her own business. As with many women, she was forced to be creative in combining career and motherhood. Ms. Dacey did wedding photography on weekends to be home during the week with her children. Later, she "flip-flopped" and did portrait work from her home studio to have weekends free with her school-age children.
   "I’m very blessed," she says. "I’m very busy. I have a wonderful business. It’s fun, unique, keeps me creative, but my clients enjoy (the portraits), too."
   She does straight portrait work as well as hand-colored pieces and creative portraits, with a more painting-like feel to them. Many of her subjects are children or mothers and babies. She has work hanging in St. Mary Medical Center’s labor and delivery wing in Langhorne.
   For this exhibition Ms. Dacey will show more of her scenic work. As with her portraits, her creative pieces tell a story, she says.
   January 6 should offer stories through photography and music, both delivered by accomplished artists. Ms. Kaisla believes art is a powerful means of communicating.
   "Sometimes it is a better way of communicating than with words," Ms. Kaisla says, "because it goes directly to the emotions. There is no room for interpreting. It is a direct way to one’s heart."
Lower Makefield Society for the Performing Arts presents Marja J. Kaisla, pianist and Kathie Dacey, photographer at the Lower Makefield Township Building, 1100 Edgewood Road, Yardley, Jan. 6. Ms. Dacey’s exhibition opens at 2:30 p.m. and Ms. Kaisla performs at 3 p.m. Admission costs $8, $7 seniors/students, $1 for children under age 12. For information call (215) 493-3010. For information about Delaware Valley Conservatory of Music, call (215) 848-3456. For information about Kathie Dacey Photography, call (215) 598-8674.