Joan & Joni, a musical tribute to Joan Baez and Joni
Mitchell, will be featured at the Center for Arts at the Armory (191
Highland Avenue, Somerville) on Thursday June 9th at 7:30 pm. Additional concert details at www.artsatthearmory.org.
In
a musical journey from the 1960s to today, singer-songwriters Allison
Shapira and Kipyn Martin demonstrate the effect Joan and Joni have had
their own development as modern musicians. Allison Shapira is a
recovering opera singer who recently found her authentic voice as a
folksinger and songwriter. Kipyn Martin is an award-winning Americana
singer-songwriter whose roots sink into the banks of the Shenandoah
River.
Shapira and Martin met during a Northeast Regional Folk Alliance (NERFA)
conference in November 2013. Both classically trained singers and
up-and-coming musicians in the Washington, DC-area folk scene, they soon
realized their musical influences were similarly shaped by the folk
revival music of the 1960s. Soon, Joan & Joni was born.
Shapira
and Martin’s power comes from their authenticity as performers; they
touch people not just through their music but also through their passion
and drive to inspire and connect with their audience. They perform a
collection of timeless songs by Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell and reveal a
few hidden gems from Joan and Joni's extensive back catalogs. By
weaving Baez and Mitchell's themes together with their own individual
messages, Shapira and Martin place an important part of American history
in a modern context.
Shapira, who teaches public speaking and
presentation skills as a way to help others find their voice, held a CD
release party for her 2012 debut recording of original songs at Club
Passim –- the famed Cambridge coffeehouse where Joan Baez got her start
in 1958.
Dubbed “a beauty of a singer” by John Gorka, Martin
was honored by the Washington Area Music Association in 2015 with a
WAMMIE Award for New Artist of the Year. She has also received numerous
awards in the Mid-Atlantic Song Contest and showcased her talents at a
joint Southeast-Northeast Regional Folk Alliance Conference in 2014. In
March of this year both Martin and Shapira received WAMMIE nominations
for Folk Contemporary Vocalist and Martin garnered an additional
nomination for Songwriter of the Year.
Founded in 2009, the
non-profit FOLK New England's mission is to document, preserve,
interpret, and present the ongoing cultural legacy of folk music in all
its forms. For additional information about FOLK New England visit www.folknewengland.org.
No comments:
Post a Comment