Join the Vermont Folklife Center 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 online here: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3357710. 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.

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. They were recently featured on NPR’s “All Songs Considered.” https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2018/02/07/583955315/anna-elizabeth-are-excavating-folk-musics-many-mysteries

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.

Details on Anna & Elizabeth’s benefit concert for the Vermont Folklife Center available here: https://www.vermontfolklifecenter.org/media-content/anna-and-elizabeth.