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Kristina Con Vita - Going It Alone Together
Suicide bombers, global warming, reality TV - we live in ugly times. Yet in a leap of faith, hope and charity,
these two young women have banded together to create a beautiful sound to salve our poor, lacerated souls.
Partnered with other people when they met, they had been trying to ignore each other's existence when they
suddenly became free birds during the summer of 2004. "Gail, our booking agent, had been talking to us about
each other since we both can remember," says Kristina Marie. "We had always heard from her how great the
other one was - almost to the point of annoyance. Like, who is this Vita girl? And, who is this Kristina chick?
How great could she possibly be?"
Opposites Attract
Feeling an immediate rapport despite their musical, stylistic and age differences, these indie ladies joined forces -
them against the world - as an acoustic duo, of all things. In an age of raucous nouveau punk and overly blinged rap
stars, it hardly seemed the strategy to capture the pop music market. "We believed we found in each other our
musical soul mates," says Vita. Adds Kristina, "It can be difficult for two strong female performers to share the
stage, especially when they're used to being the only girl on stage. But our differences have made it easy. We actually
felt inspired by these differences."
Taking Ownership
Alone together as always, they give new life to old and new pop classics. When Vita sings "Babylon," the David
Gray hit from his White Ladder album, she brings her own unique, plaintive quality to the song. The audience
knows she lived these lyrics. They know she once begged someone to let go his heart and let go his head.
She covers that song as if she wrote it, and no one wants it to sound like the record.
Then they shift gears and Kristina takes lead on "What I Like about You," the 1979 hit by the Detroit
pop-rock band, The Romantics. With her partner singing tight harmonies around her, she shakes,
rattles and rolls the audience, then wails out a bluesy harmonica riff like the rocker she is.
Being an acoustic duo takes advantage of their contrasts vocally and stylistically to create a sound
found nowhere else. And they love play with those contrasts. Sometimes, for brief moments, they switch parts,
Vita's voice swooping under Kristina's, or Kristina's suddenly leaping into Vita's range. They also work very
hard to tighten and hone their harmonies. Very hard. Their version of "Leaving on a Jet Plane" offers the
same kind of intricate, hand-crafted harmonies that made vocal folk groups like Peter, Paul and Mary great.
And in a pop scene dominated by Divas who can only harmonize with themselves through the miracle of
technology, it's nice to hear young singers who can still do it the old fashioned way. Most of all, you can see
that they not only enjoy singing together, but they have become both mentor and pupil to each other.
Continued on page 2
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