New Beaconsfield Hall, Station Road, Shipton-under-Wychwood, Oxfordshire, OX7 6BQ
Tuesday May 9th 8.00 pm., doors open 7.30 pm.
Tickets £10.00 in advance £12.00 on the door available from:
01993 831427, www.wegottickets.com/wychwoodfolkclub, wychwoodfolkclub@zoho.com, www.wychwoodfolkclub.com
Anna & Elizabeth
The collaboration between Anna Roberts-Gevalt and Elizabeth LaPrelle spans worlds—between 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 Centre 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 pair’s growing acclaim springs from a shared quartet of talents: Both are historians, storytellers, visual artists, and gifted, intuitive musicians—in combination, a ground-breaking 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 stories—of the lyrics, of the singer, of the quest to learn the song—and they illustrate them in mesmerizing fashion. The two revive the old scrolling picture show, dubbed “crankies”—intricate picture-scrolls illustrating the old songs they sing, which they create in tandem with papercuts, shadow puppets, prints, and embroidered fabric.
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