Latest news with #HiddenHarmony
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
ETSU students write thank-you notes to donors on 423 Day
JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (WJHL) — Students at East Tennessee State University wrote thank-you notes to supporters of the school on Wednesday. 423 Day is part of the new 'Forever ETSU Week of Giving' donation initiative. Previously, students would write the notes to community members, donors and local businesses as part of the university's Day of Giving. WATCH: The Yottas, Carter Co. citizens discuss Hidden Harmony at planning committee 'Today is our 423 Day, which is our day of giving,' Student Foundation ambassador Kylie Sparks said. 'It used to be a one-day event, but now we've turned it into a whole week, and today kicks off the in-person kind of Week of Giving for this week.' Students wrote the notes in The Cave at the ETSU D.P. Culp Student Center and at other spots on campus. Free food, treats, t-shirts and other items were provided. 'Today, you can come by, you can do a thank you letter,' Sparks said. 'You can do a thank you video. Either one to kind of thank donors for their donations to the university, and then you can get a T-shirt just like I'm wearing. You can get a cookie, a piece of pizza or a Chick-fil-A card.' Sparks told News Channel 11 that events like 423 Day help get students excited about Forever ETSU. 'There is a lot of energy in this room today,' Sparks said. 'We are very happy to be able to have students come and give back to the community, and they are very eager to also give back to the community.' With four days left in the Forever ETSU Week of Giving, 965 donors have helped the university reach 87% of its 1,100 donor goal. As of Wednesday afternoon, more than $515,000 had been donated to the college. For more information about the initiative, click here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
19-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Carter County residents concerned about proposed retreat
CARTER COUNTY, Tenn. (WJHL) – A couple's plan to bring what they say is a couples' retreat to Carter County is facing public backlash on social media. Originally from California, Bastian and Marisol Yotta traveled around the country before deciding to settle in Carter County. The couple said their goal is to build a spiritual retreat called Hidden Harmony to help couples reconnect. 'We want nature, we want to have peace, and we want to start a new chapter, and now we are told we are not welcome?' Bastian Yotta said. The Yottas left California and traveled for three years before settling in Carter County. 'When we visited this property, we just felt right away the love for it,' Marisol Yotta said. The Yottas said they planned to build 11 domes on property they bought in Poga as part of a couple's retreat called Hidden Harmony. Much of the public backlash surrounds Marisol's posting on adult content websites as a way of income. 'With COVID, I couldn't see my clients in person anymore,' she explained. 'I used to cook and give nutritional advice for the elderly. So, with that, I switched into social media and into other ventures.' However, the Yottas said they are ready for a change in their life. 'The setting Hidden Harmony should have been our new chapter where we said, you know what, now, after a few years, we move on,' Bastian Yotta explained. A petition has been created by Poga locals with the goal of stopping the construction on Hidden Harmony. Part of the petition reads: 'I call home the same community where the 'Hidden Harmony' project is planned to take root – a development scheme that threatens the integrity of our environment and rural Christian values. While it is every individual's right to choose their source of income, these kinds of businesses clash with our community's long-held traditions and values that have served to shape our livelihoods.' Bastian Yotta said he is surprised to receive this reaction from people in what he calls the 'Bible Belt.' 'Christ did not come to call the righteous, but the lost or wounded and the judged ones,' Bastain Yotta said. 'Jesus said, 'Let he who is without sin costs the first stone,' and I got stones thrown at me and us every single day. I don't understand it.' Carter County Commissioner Angie Odom received many messages from concerned citizens. She started looking into the proposed retreat. 'They've only received like a little drawing that was not to the point of what is needed to even issue any type of permits,' Odom said. 'With the state they are registered as a business. With the IRS they are registered as a business. But that doesn't mean that you can go ahead and start digging of the business until you know the right permit.' The Yottas say they have fulfilled what was needed to get permits. 'They told me, you need a permit for a campground and a permit for septic,' Bastian Yotta said. 'I ask, 'what are their requirements?' I fulfilled every single requirement.' The Carter County Planning and Zoning Committee will meet Tuesday in Elizabethton and will discuss the matter. The Yottas say they plan to be in attendance. 'It's good that we finally see face to face and they can approach us to ask questions,' Marison Yotta said. 'I feel like it has been a game of telephone over social media and just starting rumors over rumors about what Hidden Harmony is and isn't whereas they haven't approached us directly.' News Channel 11 did reach out to the creator of the petition but have not heard back at this time. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Guardian
09-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘It is about all of humankind': Ukrainian violinist Valentina Goncharova on her cosmic call to compose
On 7 October 2023, Kyiv-born, Tallinn-based violinist and electronic musician Valentina Goncharova 'woke up in a bad state', she says. 'I felt something terrible was happening on our planet … I called my sister and brother in Ukraine. Nothing had happened to them. But I continued to feel some kind of uncontrollable violence. 'An inner impulse told me: 'You must urgently return to work.' I turned on the electric violin, put on Tibetan percussion instruments, and began recording,' she says. Then, later that day, she opened the news 'and found out what had happened in Israel'. These recordings became Campanelli, Goncharova's first original album in more than 30 years. Her violin unspools its laments; her melodies unspool like vocal balladry. But Goncharova – framed by bookshelves, wearing a headband and robes – seems frank and unsentimental, even when talking about spiritual matters. 'The idea was to convey the life story of a human being; how a person starts their life and how this life ends,' she says, speaking in Russian through a translator. 'But when I finished, I understood that it was a story not just of one person, but it was about all of humankind.' She may not have previously completed a new album in three decades, but Campanelli is Goncharova's fourth release in five years, following two collections of archive recordings on Ukrainian label Shukai, and Ocean, her epic symphony for electric violin on Hidden Harmony which she began in 1988 and completed in 2022. Since then her music has been reviewed and internationally recognised in the press, and she has played live in cities including London and Berlin. These releases were a long time coming for someone born in Kyiv in the 1950s, who trained in Soviet Russia and has played music all her life. She was singled out for her musical aptitude at a young age. 'They would say that I had a very good memory, and I had perfect pitch,' she says. She was assigned the violin because of her small hands. She trained in Kyiv, then at the conservatory in what was then named Leningrad (now St Petersburg), and first played with an orchestra aged 12. After their studies, the young musicians were assigned to postings across Russia. Goncharova and her friend, the composer and pianist Svetlana Golybina, 'asked to go to Mongolia, Ulan-Ude city', she says. It was then an autonomous Soviet republic, but more importantly, 'it had the only Buddhist temple in the Soviet Union. It was the reason I wanted to go. We attended a congress of lamas and the Dalai Lama came. We felt their intentions, their interests. Since then Buddhism has always been very close to me. Traditionally speaking, I'm Catholic, but not strictly – I'm open to other religions and other mystical teachings.' After a year in Mongolia, Goncharova returned to Leningrad, which gifted another life-changing experience: seeing Vyacheslav Ganelin's free jazz trio at a festival. It opened her ears to wider sonic possibilities. 'It seemed similar to what we studied,' she says, 'but it was different. It was more holistic, more organic, more expressive.' She fell in with the Soviet underground rock scene, including the collective Pop-Mechanika, and got to know composers including Sergey Letov. But in 1984 she moved to Tallinn with her husband, Igor Zubkov, and lost her connection to those scenes. 'Free jazz wasn't developed in Tallinn,' she says. 'There was no audience and no musicians. I thought, 'I have to start playing free jazz alone.' I needed four or five 'voices'. So my husband bought me a tape recorder.' Goncharova and Zubkov are close collaborators. He is an engineer who helps to realise her musical visions by setting up ways to overdub with basic equipment, electrifying and building her string instruments, and constructing contact mics for them to record the sounds of household objects. She is clear that even with the electronics, she always wanted her violin to sound like a violin, but these bespoke modifications mean the tone of her playing is utterly distinctive, with a tactility like raw silk: fine and luxurious; soft but with grain. Sign up to Sleeve Notes Get music news, bold reviews and unexpected extras. Every genre, every era, every week after newsletter promotion The epic symphony Ocean is unquestionably her magnum opus, but after completing it in 2022 she stopped composing, finding that her ideas just wouldn't coalesce – until Campanelli emerged fully formed. Ocean had a cosmic scope, articulating 'the source of all forms that receive life within space and time. Ocean was all-encompassing – it was like the universe. So any other idea seemed too small next to it. It was difficult for me to get into a mood where another idea could become worthy – could look as global and as important as those ones.' Relatively speaking, Campanelli's quest to articulate life as a whole is almost provincial. The title means bells or bell-ringer in Italian (a language Goncharova speaks). It opens and closes with the gentle herald of struck Tibetan bowls, which give way to wavy glissandos and resonant strata of featherlight strings. 'When we come to this world, something happens, some kind of contact is established between the highest realm and the physical realm,' she says. 'Then when something happens in our life – something important – the sound of bell ringing is what we hear. When we leave this life, maybe that bell will ring a little bit longer, because it has to embody everything: what was at the beginning, what was in the middle and what is at the final stage. It's not something that stops, it's some sort of transition, maybe to an eternal life.' Goncharova considers herself a pacifist. 'Any war is disgusting to me,' she says when I ask about the ongoing conflict in her native Ukraine. 'Over the last three years, I have realised life in the world has changed. It has changed for every person.' I ask if she considers her music to be spiritual. 'Yes,' she says decisively. 'But if I highlighted this, people might reject [my music]. They wouldn't accept it. Those people who want it, they can find the spiritual in it. You can't really live outside of the spiritual if you're a musician.' Campanelli is out now on Hidden Harmony
