Ariana Lenarsky (’10) to present senior degree recital, release full CD

Lewis & Clark student Ariana Lenarsky (’10) is gearing up for the release of her senior degree recital, her first full-length CD, and her masquerade CD release party.

She will showcase her debut album, Big House, Little Mouse, at this Sunday’s recital in Evans Auditorium at 4 p.m. “It took me five years to finish,” said Lenarsky.

“I started writing some of the songs on the album when I was 18,” said Lenarsky. “I’m 23 now, and during that time my grandfather died very suddenly — he was this impossibly funny, gentle man from Brooklyn that everybody just loved, especially the kids. There’s something so crucial about being an adult who can still relate to kids and the scary world they live in.”

“In making this album, I thought about those beautifully illustrated children’s books by Chris Van Allsburg—the ones that are quiet and beautiful, but also creepy and grand. I tried to provide a lot to observe, like reading a picture book with a lot of glittering animals and odd imagery, and it’s sometimes a little unsettling. In a way these are ghost stories, but they’re also just stories, stories that subtly express my big and unsubtle fears about mortality and loss.”

Born into a family of passionate musicians, Lenarsky has been involved in music for as long as she can remember. “I have been singing in front of crowds since I was eight years old,” she said. “And growing up in Hollywood, I caught the ‘entertainment bug’ very early on.”

One of her earliest memories of being introduced to music was watching her third grade teacher put on a one-man-show version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera. “Here was a 60-year-old man putting on an unabashedly awesome performance and completely enthralling us,” she said. “I sort of went crazy.”

Lenarsky cites Paul Simon, Joanna Newsom, Feist and Joni Mitchell as her idols, and sees Sheryl Crow’s Tuesday Night Music Club (much to her embarrassment) and the Beatles’ Abbey Road as early influences.

“My parents were divorced, and for some reason my dad moved like an hour away from my elementary school,” she said. “But it was great because on the way to school we’d spend an hour listening to music. And I’d sing all the Beatles songs for the rest of the day.”

Though she is confident now, Lenarsky was originally unsure about committing to the music major.

“Last semester I asked a guest teacher during a master class if pursing music as a career was a valid idea, since it doesn’t offer the same financial safety net like more conventional majors. She looked at me right in the eye and said ‘It’s urgent! This is urgent. If people play music together, they can’t kill each other.’”

Aside from the upcoming recital, Lenarsky is eager to promote her Big House, Little Mouse CD Release Masquerade Party on November 6 at Launchpad Gallery in SE Portland. The gallery features an art exhibition called “Works in Masks” showing “a lot of eerie masks that look like something you’ll find in an ancient cave,” she said.

The show will be free and open to all ages and, in addition to music and art, will also offer plenty of delicious snacks and beautiful boys.

“For all my Lewis & Clark ladies, of course,” she said. “I got you.”