By ARIADNE WILL
Special to the Sentinel
Joined by Montana singer-songwriter Izaak Opatz and cousins duo Dyado, the perennial Sitka performer Raph Shapiro will give a concert 8 p.m. Tuesday, August 20.
“We’re doing it at the PAC,” Shapiro said in a Sentinel interview. “I’m very excited to be bringing a couple other wonderful acts with me this summer.”
The three acts were connected by mutual friend Kendall Rock. Rock, like Shapiro, has spent many summers in Sitka working at the Sitka Fine Arts Camp. Rock is also helping Opatz and Dyado with an Alaska-wide tour.
“All of us are very itinerant artists,” Shapiro said. “One of the things that connects us all is that we each have homes all over the country where we love to sing and play songs. Sitka is that for me.”
Shapiro, who has continued coming to Sitka since his first visit in 2011, has maintained a healthy appreciation for the town.
“Sitka is such an inspiring place,” he said. “The environment and the community really inspire alone time and quiet time. There are so many beautiful corners.”
Singer/songwriter Raph Shapiro. (Sentinel File Photo)
He said Sitka’s effect on him has also impacted his music.
“Because it’s so far away from my home,” Shapiro said, “Sitka’s the place I can really go and unwind. I don’t have to worry so much about the day-to-day. It allows my creative self to come out a little bit more.”
A folk musician, Shapiro didn’t start making his own music until the end of high school, in East Hampton, New York, when he took up the guitar.
Even then, he didn’t make music a more pointed pursuit until 2014, when he was 24.
“I love the stories the songs tell, I love the simple and beautiful melodies and harmonies, I love the tradition of it, the history of it,” he said. “There’s also something intangible. We’re all drawn to different things, different tastes, and folk music is always something that’s spoken to me.”
Shapiro’s attitude toward Sitka reflects his feelings toward songwriting.
“(Songwriting) is sort of a mystical and spontaneous experience,” he said. “It’s very much born from personal experience and place and people and I’m still working very much on figuring out on how to make it more routine.”
He added that for himself, songwriting is something he’s still trying to decipher.
“It’s more picking up the guitar and finding the melody and finding the words and the words start affixing themselves to the melody,” he said.
Shapiro has observed his music evolve in recent years.
“I’ve been living in Austin, Texas, for the last three and a half years,” he said. “I’ve found my sound getting more electrified down there, and I’ve been playing with a band sometimes.”
He said that while this new, more “electrified” sound is different, he enjoys both it and the acoustic sound he started out with.
“I do enjoy both styles, both acoustic and electric, and it’s fun to go back and forth in between,” he said.
Shapiro will be joined on stage by partner Lauren Tronick, who will be performing with Shapiro at the Performing Arts Center for the second year in a row.
“It’s so exciting to be able to play at the PAC. I hope we get a lot of people out there for it,” he said, adding that Sitka is a place that has become integral to his music.
“There are a lot of beautiful places in the world and what has set Sitka apart for me is the amazing community of friends and family and amazing support,” he said. “Raven Radio is definitely the station that has played my music more than any other station in the world.”
