It's very pleasing to welcome a returning musician to bellwoods, and it's especially wonderful when they come from across the country in order to do so. Christina Maria first serenaded us into the warm loving arms of the Autumn season in the park. This time she came during the prosperus summertime, under a hot sun, she returned to the original location of her first session to bring new sounds to the lonely shrubbery on the dog bowl hill.

view Christina's first session below

  The leaves are falling, crunching and burning out their brightest shades of red and orange before they recede into the earth like mulchy confetti. They're making their presence known in Bellwoods like a final spark a firecracker makes before it dies. This season was made for girls like Christina Maria. She sinks her feet into the dewy leaves with no reservation. Her feet are cold and free. She's not the kind of girl that sings in mousey whispers. Her volume is expanding clearly through the autumn sky molecules like they never knew what hit 'em. She combines folk, country and jazz as if they were interchangeable. All of them, her at once. Possessing a restless heart, something that requires not only a song, but a chorus sung with the full force of her lungs- to cut through shuffling leaves and airplanes flying ahead. At the very end of 'Red Bike" she sings, "when you get too drunk, I'll come and pick you up" and then we come to see her as a good woman, fearless and in love. A lady, unafraid to ride her bike in the rain.