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Event
Anna & Elizabeth in Concert
Anna & Elizabeth, Centrum Artists-in Residence, will conclude their residency with a performance at Rainshadow Recording Studio in Port Townsend.
"They came to NPR and brought many of us to tears with some of the most yearning harmonies I've heard at the Tiny Desk. These songs are given few embellishments sometimes a fiddle is added to a single voice, sometimes a banjo or guitar chimes in but always the power is in the sparseness. If you've never thought your tastes would lean to mountain music, take a deep breath and soak it all in." - Bob Boilen, NPR Music
The collaboration between Anna Roberts-Gevalt and Elizabeth LaPrelle spans worldsbetween their homes in Brooklyn and rural Virginia; between deep study of mountain ballads and explorations into the avant garde. One year ago found them researching in traditional music archives in Vermont and Virginia, then using that raw material to develop new work at residencies at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and the MacDowell Colony. They spent the summer and fall touring across the US, UK, and Ireland, including The Newport Folk Festival and Cambridge Folk Festival (UK). Their mission is to balance respect for traditional music and musicians who came before with a relentless push into new artistic territories.
The pairs growing acclaim springs from a shared quartet of talents: Both are historians, storytellers, visual artists, and gifted, intuitive musiciansin combination, a groundbreaking approach.
Inspired by the richness and tradition of the music, Anna & Elizabeth gather songs and stories from archives and visits with elders. They bring these songs to life in performance with sparse, atmospheric arrangements using guitar, banjo, fiddle, and the uncanny blend of their voices in close harmony. They accompany their songs with storiesof the lyrics, of the singer, of the quest to learn the songand they illustrate them in mesmerizing fashion. The two revive the old scrolling picture show, dubbed crankiesintricate picture-scrolls illustrating the old songs they sing, which they create in tandem with papercuts, shadow puppets, prints, and embroidered fabric.
Anna & Elizabeth met in 2011, and their work has brought them to stages across the world, including the Atlanta Museum of Modern Art; folk festivals in Brooklyn, the Yukon, Chicago, Maine, and Uzbekistan; residencies at universities; summer traditional music schools; and small theaters and folk clubs across the U.S. and U.K.
Their second album, which features Grammy nominee and legendary folk singer Alice Gerrard, was released March 2015 on Free Dirt Records. It has been featured on Vices Noisey, the Huffington Post, No Depression, and NPR Musics Tiny Desk Concert series.
Anna & Elizabeth are beginning a new cycle of work, inspired by ballad singers of the 1930s and 1940s in Vermont and Virginiathe states where they grew up. Spending time in archives, with the families of these singers, and with a director, Anna & Elizabeth with explore connections between place and tradition to develop a new show, a new set of crankies, and a new album inspired by these ballads.
ELIZABETH LAPRELLE 29, has pursued her interest in mountain ballads for over a decade. Since the release of her debut album at age 16, shes been hailed as one of the most dedicated students of the traditional unaccompanied style of her generation. The student of master singer Ginny Hawker and National Heritage Fellow Sheila Kay Adams, Elizabeth was the first recipient of the Henry Reed Award from the Library of Congress at age 16, and won the 2012 Mike Seeger Award at Folk Alliance International. She has released three solo ballad albums, and was called the best young Appalachian ballad singer to emerge in recent memory by UKs fRoots Magazine. She lives on a farm in Rural Retreat, Virginia.
ANNA ROBERTS-GEVALT, 29 is a versatile and passionate multi-instrumentalist. Classically trained on the violin in Vermont, she fell in love with the sound of banjo in college, moved to the mountains, and learned with master musicians in Kentucky, Virginia, and North Carolina. She is a blue-ribbon fiddler and banjo player (WV State Folk Fest, Kentucky Fiddle Contest); was awarded the Berea Archive Fellowship for a series of biographies of female fiddlers; served three years as artistic director of Kentuckys traditional music institute, the Cowan Creek Mountain Music School; was a 2014 fellow in the State Department sponsored international music residency OneBeat; and is an in-demand video artist, collaborating with Kristin Andreassen, Cuddle Magic, Rachel Ries and Ben Sollee. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwF62oixmRw&list=RDgwF62oixmRw
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LocationRainshadow Recording Studio (View)
Fort Worden State Park, Bldg 315 West
Port Townsend, WA 98368
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: Yes! |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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