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Rita Kovtun

@ritakovtun

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(cove-tune)
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photography as witnessing 🤲🏼
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booking sessions in NC, MN, OH📸
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Russian born 🪆 Minnesota raised 🐟 Asheville based 🌄
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music @heyritka
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Crescent Choir is back for a third season.

We’re looking for original songs from local Asheville area artists to bring into collective choral performance. Across genre, across style. If it has a spark, we want to hear it.

Song submissions are open now through November 2nd. Link in bio.

📸 by @ritakovtun

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✨tonight! ✨ glow church ✨ we’ve added longtime swamper @auraofvalentina as well as members of @crescent_choir and @phiabird @shunyu___huang @xor_music @sleep_number_ @henrytallman @dvshruthi13 @@ritakovtun @ayyfrye and moreeeee ✨🐊✨🕯️🪩🕯️

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Sasha and Fern got married!
It was the best time.

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📣 Holiday applications are OPEN 📣 We’re looking for crafters, makers, artists, food purveyors, and vintage curators 💫 Apply today and tag a friend you think would like to join us for our favorite time of year!

𝙃𝙤𝙡𝙞𝙙𝙖𝙮 𝙋𝙤𝙥 𝙐𝙥 𝙎𝙝𝙤𝙥
NOV 6 - DEC 24
open everyday inside the Asheville Mall open

𝙃𝙤𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙅𝙤𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙉𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 𝙈𝙖𝙧𝙠𝙚𝙩
Tuesday, DEC 15 | 5-9PM
inside the Orange Peel

Click the links in our bio for all the details and to apply today.

📷 Photography by @ritakovtun of the 2025 Holiday Pop Up Shop

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Vendor applications for the holidays are opening soon! We have our two favorite events of the year coming up 🌟🎁🎉

𝙃𝙤𝙡𝙞𝙙𝙖𝙮 𝙋𝙤𝙥 𝙐𝙥 𝙎𝙝𝙤𝙥 inside the Asheville Mall open Nov through Christmas Eve

𝙃𝙤𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙅𝙤𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙉𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 𝙈𝙖𝙧𝙠𝙚𝙩 inside the Orange Peel in Dec

Sign up for our newsletter to get the application in your inbox 💌 Link in our bio.

📷 Photography by @ritakovtun

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The concept of the Melodic Elixir has been birthed from almost 2 decades as a therapist, over 4 decades of evolving as a musician (4 years of actively recording and sharing my songs), 9 years of dreaming of how to intertwine my passion for music and personal / collective / ancestral healing, and a lifetime of wrestling with the idea of community and searching for the felt sense of Home in my bones.✨
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I’d be absolutely honored to have you join in the co-creation of this inaugural offering of musical tonic on September 12th! More details and tickets in 🔗 ⬆️. Feel free to read on for some seasonal musings in this potent Leo eclipse portal we are in.✨
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Do you feel the tides turning? The winds shifting? Our minds beginning to remember the seeds and codes we carry in our cells? The shining suns inside each of our hearts rising up for the greater good?✨
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I hold this trans-generational dream and choose to nurture it tenaciously and never let go (even when logic and tangible proof show otherwise). The wisdom and strength of our ancestors flowing through us as we also acknowledge, grieve, and repair the pain they’ve caused, too. The both / and.✨
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Leo south node. Aquarius north node. Eclipses in the skies that lead to eclipses in our lives and eclipses in the fabric of time. Endings of what no longer serves our highest good and the planet’s highest good to welcome in what does.✨
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The generous, protective heart of the lion rising in us all to truly see and cherish ourselves, the Land, and each other. We all belong to to the same pride, the same pack, the same human race. Differences, similarities, beauty, scars, and all.✨
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May we choose abundant love with wise boundaries. May we choose justice over comfort. May we choose the mess and beauty of community over the “tidy” detachment of individual isolation. May we choose joy and creation over despair and numbness.✨
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May we treat each other as we all are one, because we are. May old toxic paradigms, oppressive systems, and corrupt leaders come crumbling down. And may new seeds be planted, new roots reaching out to connect under the soil and across the sea….to the ancient ones that have been there all along.✨
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📣 Golden Folk returns to the Grey Eagle this Wednesday, August 19th!

It's been tough to find the right words to talk about our event last month to support @soft.talk.only. We were able to raise around $2500 to support our friend Doug as he navigates the financial reality of living with a rare disease. It's a huge honor to be able to give back to the community that supports us in turn, and we don't take it for granted. Doug is a treasure of the WNC musical community and a true genius. Tune into what he's doing and take it in.

We got to witness one of the most magical and tender nights the Golden Folk stage has ever seen, tenderly co-curated with Doug. Maisy and Lucky Break started it off strong with their tender folk/pop tunes, then Lyle and Anabel floored us with their tight interweaved harmonies. Dulci brought a large dose of Rafflemania energy to help us hustle for Doug (and thanks to Luke @outtherestudioswnc for the generous raffle prize), then Becca and Dulci brought down the house with their powerful song in the round. Finally, Mother Marrow and Doug's sets featured a rotating cast of loved ones and some of the most inventive instrumentation to have ever graced our stage (bowed glockenspiel, kazoo, shruti box, and a custom music box...wow!). If you were there in the room with us, you know what we mean when we say that the energy in the room that night was unlike anything we've witnessed before.

We are back at it this coming Wednesday with a lineup chock-full of rippers. This might be our best lineup yet... we've got old locals, new locals, and a large dose of incredible new and old friends from out of town with a wide variety of musical stylings. Trust us, you don't want to miss it.

Here are the artists from last month in the order they performed and the people who made the evening possible. Give them all a follow!
@maisy0wen
@imyourluckybreak
@lyledevitry
@beccaleighmusic
@mothermarrow
@soft.talk.only
📸: @stephanpruittfiasco @fiasco.media
🔊: @doctorcigarette420
🎤: @lukelukem @eclaywhite
🎨: @grifttowngoods
❤️: @dulcisings
🏠: @thegreyeagle
☂️: @friendshipvalleyprod @outtherestudioswnc

#asheville #greyeagle #goldenfolk #ashevillemusic #friendship

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My body continues to be an alien landscape, and also the most familiar of places. I make my home in it the only ways I know how. By loving, by swimming, and by making.

So here’s some upcoming times to enjoy the things I’ve been making!!!

Friday, Aug. 14, 7:30-8pm - @crescent_choir will be performing a short set (including one of my songs!) as part of the opening reception of the new Mad Co Arts Council show, “Holding Together: Cloth, Material & Making” (curated by @amberm.jensen )

Saturday, Aug. 22, 1pm-Sundown - Tea Tent Fête!!! (Blannahasset Island). This event is to support the continuation of our beloved Tea Tent, and there will be so so many lovely and amazing musicians all day, and a handful of amazing crankies and shadow puppets also being performed…including, my very own crankies and shadow show! Moonglow Shadow Show will be performing from 5:30-6pm, but please be sure to come for all the rest of the magic!

Sunday, Aug. 23, 7:30pm - The Hermit dance! @ritualmovement555
This dance has been a long-awaited opportunity for me to alchemize some of my intense experience being often bedbound and disabled up on this hill. The set is going to be epic, and the altar sculpture will be a magic portal! So much more to say about it, but just wanted to make sure you all get it on your calendars!

And last but not least:
Thursday, Sep. 17 - Save the date for the first day of the fall season of @resound.community.choir ! We are working hard behind the scenes and will have more details to share soon.

I love you all! Thanks for being my reason to keep on living!

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I brought @ritakovtun and @danifreakinfresh to one of my favorite swim spots when Dani visited earlier this week, and I cherished every moment of it (it was a VERY refreshing swim in cold mountain water).

I feel so lucky to have so much love in my life that spans such great distances ❤️

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Today is a special day. In honor of what would have been my friend Dave Hamilton’s 40th birthday, I’m releasing a song inspired by his passing. I wrote “Feel It All” in the wake of Dave’s death in the spring of 2025. Prior to losing Dave, I had lost older family members, but his death hit different. I met Dave in @resound.community.choir in the fall of 2024, right after Helene had so intensely rearranged us all in WNC, physically and emotionally, and was instantly smitten. He had a sparkle in his eye, a zeal for making music, and deep care for the people and land he was in community with. Over the next few months, Dave and I grew a budding friendship and brief romance. Although we weren’t in each other’s daily lives, he left a deep impression on me, and my heart was shattered when I received the news that he had taken his life.

This song is a heart offering. Although it is about Dave, it asks the questions that I imagine most people face in a period of deep grief: What is there left to do? What is there left to do, but to weave beauty from it all? But to feel it all? I think most of us know this: Grief is so hard, but it also opens us up to the full spectrum of available emotion. In the weeks after Dave’s death, I felt incredible sadness, and I also felt moments of incredible joy and ove.

Endless gratitude to all those who helped me birth this song into the world. @mlesprg for the Florist show at @ayurpanalisteningroom in those first weeks that cracked me open and gave me the oomph to finish writing this song. @doctor.delia for tracking my guitar and vocals at Humming House exactly a month after Dave’s passing; for lending your violin magic to this tune (an instrument Dave played as well); for seeing me and holding me through the grief and the journey of this song. Eric Schackne for opening your heart to this project despite never meeting Dave; deftly combining my ideas and yours to make it come alive; finessing the song until it felt right and getting it over the finish line with the mix and master. (cont in comments)

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Come see some music happen on Tuesday! There has been lots of it lately, and now there’s a new song, and some extremely satisfying collaborative sounds!

(There has also been lots of swimming, rain, moths, fireflies, gardens, etc.)

This upcoming @goldenfolk.avl is a fundraiser for our friend Doug (@soft.talk.only ) to help cover the high cost of his medical bills from living with acromegaly (a rare and painful disorder caused by a brain tumor). The lineup is stellar, and we’re all excited to share some tunes with you!

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Here the summer is blowing its hot breath on my neck and everything is all abloom and abuzz. I never got to post these slides for Golden Hour, the call to restful connection came in swift this year and we filled quietly and quickly, but I’ve been admiring these slides showing off snaps that @ritakovtun caught at the Ranch last year and still wanted to share. Wanted them to have a home here on the grid - proof of life, of connection, of the web still doing its web thing - weaving us together. So in just under two weeks three whole handfuls of us head toward the valley - toward quietude and candlelight and pond swims and circle chats. And I’m just feeling so blessed for it.

Hope you find a creek to sit in, a willow to dance with, a song to sing, an afternoon nap, wherever you are.

xo

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