Anna & Elizabeth

Anna and Elizabeth will play songs they’ve been developing for the last year, as well as sharing the stage in collaboration with Alec Spiegelman and Benjamin Lazar Davis, the producers of their new 7-inch Hop High/Here in the Vinyard.  This set takes the minimalist approach of their previous work and moves into the avant-garde, into a present-day space outside the museum where these stories live, breathe, and grow. Anna & Elizabeth re-create two well-known traditional songs by carefully surrounding them with unexpected elements: pump organ, rousing woodwind and string arrangements, electronics, and Indonesian “pelog” tuning, to name a few.

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 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.