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For the first time, our four storytellers participated in a Queens community “Art Heart” event about a month before the show, where all the participants generated and shared personal stories inspired by the life and music of Astoria legend Tony Bennett from the Greater Astoria Historical Society archives.

What started that day grew into this heartfelt story swap about the intricacies of mothers, daughters, language, music, and the immigrant experience.

Give a listen to the first half of our “Left My Heart” show performed at Grove 34 on June 5, 2024. Full program here.

Story partners Catherine Kapphahn and January Yoon Cho

Read this imaginary interview with Tony Bennett published in the Queens Gazette by Bob Singleton, Executive Director of the Greater Astoria Historical Society.

Stories

  • MOTHER’S DREAM, by January Yoon Cho, performed by Catherine Kapphahn
  • LOPSIDED STAR, by Catherine Kapphahn, performed by January Yoon Cho

Storyteller Bios

January Yoon Cho, an interdisciplinary visual artist, works with video, photography, and drawing, intertwining themes of social conformity, feminism, and environmentalism. She has exhibited across the US and Europe. Notably, Cho’s The Walk Project received fiscal sponsorship from the NY Foundation for the Arts and grants from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund and Puffin Grant for Feminist and Environmental Art. Cho has taught at Parsons School of Design, New School University, and Hanyang University (Seoul). Originally from Seoul, Korea, she moved to the US in 1990 for her art education, earning a BFA from RISD and an MFA from Parsons.

Catherine Kapphahn is a writer, educator, storyteller, and speaker. Her memoir Immigrant Daughter: Stories You Never Told Mereceived The Center for Fiction’s Christopher Doheny Award and was published by Audible. Her manuscript Miseducation of a Dyslexic Girl: a Memoir in Poems and Classrooms was recently long-listed for the Steel Toe Books Poetry Award. Catherine received grants from the Queens Council on the Arts and City Artist Corps. Her writing has appeared in Queensbound, Motherwell Magazine, Croatia Week, Newtown Literary, the Feminist Press Anthology This is the Way We Say Goodbye, Astoria Life, and CURE Magazine. Catherine is an adjunct lecturer at City University of New York at Lehman College in the Bronx, where her students’ stories inspire her. Catherine is also a yoga teacher. She grew up near the mountains in Colorado and now lives between two bridges in Queens, New York, with her husband and two sons.