ARYA 1921-2005
Very sad news: Arya died in October 2005. Do you remember Arya? Please submit your memories using the REVIEW link below

TRIBUTE TO ARYA


Arya has moved on, up and away to a gig in the sky. She is indeed a star, and if you tune into the celestial Angels that must surely have signed up as her new backing band they will doubtless be heard giving full voice to the magnificent Exile song-cycle.

`Ollie to Arya` - her last gig on Earth
Infact, Arya launched her singer-songwriter career at 80 something, and the Brighton Komedia performance she gave on July 29 2003 was her official public debut. Special thanks to film maker Ewan Gorman ewan@blackrockfilms.co.uk

The event, entitled `Ollie to Arya`, was a very special showcase for Healthy Concerts, an unprecedented community house concerts initiative founded by Paul Chi in 1994 and supported by Arya, who throughout the 90s generously hosted many beautiful concerts in her enchanting Brighton seafront home. The idea behind the Komedia event was to demonstrate the unique value of Healthy Concerts by featuring it's youngest and oldest artist in the same programme and making them top of the bill at a prestigious Brighton music venue. The young Ollie, also making his debut, was equally brilliant and crowned this marvellous accasion by presenting Arya with a bouquet of flowers, in perfect harmony with the standing ovation she was then receiving. The event was hugely successful and uniquely memorable.

Songs of Exile
Words Arya
Music Paul Chi

``Arya was a very special lady - strong and charismatic. Over the years I have often watched her house concert performances with Paul Chi and enjoyed the passion, conviction and humour that they exuded together. One of my favourite songs of all time is Arya & Chi's 'Smiling at a Rose'. I remember their last concert together at the Komedia, where she received a standing ovation. It was a deeply moving moment. Arya, keep shining - and thankyou.`` Magdalena Reising

``I really enjoyed those late evenings (early mornings) that I stayed up going through the Exile songs with Arya, tender moments interspersed with trips to the loo, returning via the kitchen to fetch the coffee, then pour another whisky! She was so patient in learning the tunes and tried her very best to be faithful to the music I had composed. At the end of the day she would forget all the prompts and just sing the songs from the heart, as only she could do. Arya was more than a singer or a songwriter, she was a true artist and it was a great privilege to have worked with her.`` Paul Chi



She was quite a Brighton character. Here is an article I wrote about Arya some time ago:

ARYA by PAUL CHI

You don't interview Arya before she's interviewed you. She is intensely alert and inquisitive and she`ll have your name and number before you've remembered what you came for!
I'm here to play the Bleuthner, a grand piano that proudly protrudes through the happy clutter of her cultural lounge; her Angel Centre - venue for many a magical evening of Healthy Concerts.

The winds of change have come often for Arya. She herself sings of 'the wind in the trees' back home in Latvia. When she looks out from the Balcony of her Brighton sea front flat she sees the chilling spectre of the West Pier, all whipped to the bone by northerly winds and neglect (and now burnt out!)

Arya has many a tale to tell...
"I grew up in a country that had just come free after the First World War (to become) the independent Republic, Latvia."
Her Exile song cycle begins...
"The tiniest heart shaped land, with amber and silvery strand, where castles as children we built and played there without any guilt."
Her childhood was idyllic...
"Everything was plenty and we had a country home and I went to school, a French school. I always wanted to sing or act and dance and I took every opportunity to do that."
She couldn`t have imagined the dramatic changes that lay ahead - the Russians were coming...
"Tanks rolled in at night and we flew!"
It wasn`t that straight forward, it never is. She talked about Siberian labour camps, the German occupation and the great exodus, boats bound for Sweden that sank and relatives scattered to the far corners of the Earth. In the Pakistan days Arya worked on the radio...
"I interviewed Dave Brubeck among others..."
Belle of the ball, she was never far from movies and cabaret performances. Her singing and dancing talents made a mark on America too, from New York down to Key West.

Arya can be graceful and charming but make no mistake about it, she's tough. I always maintain that if she'd been a man she`d have been a professional boxer! Chris Eubanks perhaps - shares the same birthday. As it is, she sings with attitude and a cutting edge. Is she Brighton's answer to Marlene Deitrick?

Where does she get her energy?
"Somewhere inside of me I think there is a spiritual fountain and that`s where it comes from, it really does. We all have that and we need to be aware of it."

The Exile poems touch the sadness that all dispossessed and home-sick people feel. When I first read these poems I thought they must be songs and the music came very easily to me. Imagined Homecoming (Smiling at a Rose) is an incredible song...
"'To be there and not to be, and to see but not to see, and to open yet to close, is like smiling at a rose."

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