UPCOMING EVENTS (that I’m involved with in one way or another):
March 5 at Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, Troy, NY | The Ladles on the Lift Series | Tickets (curator)
March 9 at Troy Listening Room, Troy, NY | Jake Sherman and Daniel Kleederman | Tickets (curator)
March 16 at The Drake, Amherst, MA | NOW Ensemble | Tickets
The delightful NOW Ensemble performs music that I wrote and arranged for them and their 20th anniversary season. I’ll be at this show!
March 20 at Mojo’s, Troy, NY | Shifting Balance: An Equinox Evening | Tickets TBA
My next performance. An intimate double bill with Julia Alsarraf to celebrate the spring equinox. More info to come.
Hi you,
I have some big news to share. A few things actually. Wonderful things. Gosh, it’s felt strange, confusing, and wrong to feel excitement this past month. My inner emotional world has been swinging hard. And, I remind myself that allowing ourselves joy is a crucial part of how we resist despair and passivity.
I’d like to share my joy with you. Here’s the first piece of it (more soon):
I’m changing my artist name to Sova.
Whew! I’ve been chewing on this for years, too nervous to take the plunge. But I’m leaping now!
My name, and the name I’ve been using professionally since college – Sophia Subbayya Vastek – is so very dear to me. Every piece of it holds me, my history, and my family. Subbayya is my mother’s family name. And Vastek comes from my dad, who died 10 years ago last month. Originally Chwastek, my father changed it to Vastek after immigrating to the United States.
Having all three names has often felt like I’m triangulating and searching for my ancestry, likely because of a deeply felt disconnect.
My name feels like armor. Simultaneously, a thread. A window into histories that I know so little about. I’ve worn it with pride and will continue to do so in my personal life.
I haven’t explicitly put words to this here, but I’ve been undergoing fairly seismic shifts in my artistry. If you’ve known me for a while, and many of you on this list have, you will remember that pre-pandemic I was a classical recital pianist. I played music by other composers. I collaborated with composers. I commissioned composers. The projects grew in scope. But I was not the composer.
I spent several years cutting my teeth in New York City, desperately trying to be a part of a loveless relationship: the contemporary classical music scene. There’s A LOT more to say there (another time), but at the end of the day, it wasn’t my soul music.
It took leaving NYC and a global pandemic for me to fully internalize that something was missing in my creative output.
(This is not to say that I don’t enjoy playing classical music — don’t worry, I have a Chopin project brewing, some day!)
In Our Softening poured out of me. That record was the tipping point. I began completely reinventing how I play concerts. How I approach my music-making. How I think about my musical life. How I think about music production. Sweet readers: it felt so right, and it continues to feel right. Little by little, piecing together new modes of performing and creating, the veil started to lift. And what’s more — the career opportunities have grown in ways I couldn’t have imagined before.
I found my soul music, and big surprise, it was inside me all along.
All this to say, Sova emerged, and it’s been strangely helpful to put a name to a part of myself that has felt unnamed for a long time. Don’t worry, she’s still me, and I’m still Sophia. But Sova will be the container I use for my music from here on out.
Why Sova?
On a surface level, it’s a shortening of Sophia Vastek. Sova (or Sowa) also means owl in several Slavic languages, a tender connection to my dad through his native language. And owls, in turn, have a deep history – through mythology and other cultural lenses – of being associated with wisdom. And Sophia? Well, Sophia also means wisdom.
Not a day goes by that I don’t think about how I can live into the potential of my given name. Sova will be another reminder. It’s not a turning away from who I am, rather, it’s a conscious decision to choose who I am.
Logistically, you’ll start to see Sova floating around. My new website is live: sova.music. Future concert posters and announcements will use Sova.
But it’s going to be messy for a while. All of my history as a professional musician, around 15 years give or take, is under Sophia Subbayya Vastek. I’d be lying if I didn’t say there’s a sadness there, as good as Sova feels. It will take time to make new associations and create a body of work under this new name. I appreciate your understanding, and your help, as I navigate this transition.
I’m grateful for you. Thank you for being you.
xoxo
Sophia / Sova
Best wishes on your journey under a new flag! Here we all like how even your classical work has a different and independent feeling and sound. I’ve discovered and have been enjoying your Lili recordings most recently.
💖