Anna & Elizabeth - A Benefit Concert for the Vermont Folklife Center
Anna & Elizabeth
Photo by John Cohen
Anna & Elizabeth - A Benefit Concert for the Vermont Folklife Center
Join us on April 21, 2018 at the Champlain Valley Unitarian Universalist Society in Middlebury, VT for a benefit performance by Smithsonian Folkways recording artists, Anna & Elizabeth, with special guest Moira Smiley.
Doors open at 6:00pm. Performance begins at 7:00pm. General admission tickets are $30. Due to very limited seating we encourage attendees to purchase tickets in advance. A small number of tickets will be available at the door for $40 each.
Proceeds from this event will support the Vermont Folklife Center’s mission to document, sustain and present the diverse cultures of Vermont.
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Anna & Elizabeth will present an evening of music, storytelling, art and appreciation for two significant archival collections in Middlebury. Their much anticipated recording on Smithsonian Folkways, The Invisible Comes to Us, features traditional songs the pair learned by exploring the Margaret MacArthur Collection of the Vermont Folklife Center Archive and the Helen Hartness Flanders Ballad Collection at Middlebury College Special Collections. The Invisible Comes to Us is a spellbinding reconfiguration of these ancient folk ballads that sees the duo’s immersion in American traditional music move to a place of boundless experimentation.
Anna & Elizabeth combine two powerful and very distinct voices. Elizabeth LaPrelle was raised in rural Virginia and is frequently lauded as the finest traditional singer of her generation. Anna Roberts-Gevalt, raised in Vermont, is a multi-instrumentalist whose musical curiosity has taken her from old time fiddling in Kentucky to a more recent immersion in Brooklyn’s avant-garde community. Together they find new ways to tell old stories of love, loss and intrigue, while relishing the tension that arises between their very different backgrounds and orthodoxies; holding firm to the roots of the music while removing the limits of how that music can be played and presented.
Moira Smiley will join this incredible evening as well, bringing elegance and grit to folk songs both original and ancient. Expect soul-stirring arrangements of Anglo-Celtic ballads, American spirituals, European folk-laments and sharp, poignant originals that call effortlessly upon the audience to whisper, clap, or sing along.
Anna & Elizabeth were recently featured on NPR's All Songs Considered. Learn more about them and their work: Anna & Elizabeth Are Excavating Folk Music's Many Mysteries.
Event Sponsors:
The Champlain Valley Unitarian Universalist Society is located at 2 Duane Ct, Middlebury, VT 05753.
Concert parking available at Middlebury Union High School south of CVUSS on Charles Avenue. Limited handicapped parking available in lot adjoining CVUSS. Parking on the grass anywhere in the vicinity of the church campus or neighborhood is prohibited.