Christina Courtin Is Going Places…

Sometimes a song comes along that you hear in public—in a store, on the radio, at a restaurant, in a waiting room—that makes you want to jump up and demand that somebody give you the CD that it’s on.  A song that you just MUST have, you love it so much that you don’t want it to ever leave your ears in case it’s never played ever again.  We’ve all had those moments.

I feel that way whenever I listen to my friend Christina Courtin, a young girl (in her mid-20s, or somewhere near it) I went to high school with and who has gone on to do amazing things in New York City.  Christina went to New York to attend the esteemed Julliard School for violin, just one side of her many musical talents.  Christina has also worked on the side with a few different musical outfits, her current one being Christina Courtin’s Running Kicks.  Another band of hers, Prioress, released an EP a few years back that was laden with so many wonderful moments you wished it were longer than eight tracks.  With Running Kicks, Courtin takes a much more laid-back approach to her tunes, creating a sounds more akin to Norah Jones and less of the Dave Matthews Band-like sound of Prioress.

But to categorize Courtin in either of these two musical genres—or in any category—would be unfair to her many talents.  When she was writing and playing songs more similar to a jam band sound, she was using her violin skills and vocal prowess to craft an organic sound.  With her recent efforts, the process of performance has taken a backseat to the tenderness of her words and delicate sounds; her songwriting is truly taking center stage, and that’s saying a lot when you consider how emotionally raw her performances are.

Christina recorded a rooftop concert in Brooklyn to support her Running Kicks EP release, the single of which has spawned a great music video that shows off the best of what this girl has to offer:  her spirit, her skills and her energy.  It sounds so esoteric to put it so mystically as that, but that’s really what Christina Courtin makes you feel when you listen and watch her.  Here is the video for one of my favorite songs of hers, “Foreign Country"…

If you’re so lucky as to be in NYC when she’s performing (which is about every day of the year, it so happens), then you should find yourself in her company.  Also, you can take a peek around the Internet and see what the press and New York critical crowd has said about her.  Once in a while, when she’s in town she stops by a local pub or concert hall and gives an impromptu concert.  Be there when that happens.  It’s magical.

Be on the lookout for her full-length LP debut in January on Nonesuch Records.

Photo by Matt Kilmer

Posted by on 07/09 at 02:37 PM