On Sunday, August 18, 2013 at 4:00 pm, the 15th Annual Calais Concert will be held at the Old West Church in Calais, Vermont. This year, the concert will feature Anna Roberts-Gevalt. Tickets are $15 at the door. A portion of the proceeds will benefit the Vermont Folklife Center.
For 15 years, The Calais Concert has been organized by singer Deb Flanders in honor of her great-aunt Helen Hartness Flanders, one of the pioneers of folk music history in the United States. Helen Hartness Flanders, a native of Vermont, was an internationally recognized ballad collector and authority on folk music found in New England and in the British Isles. Today, 4,500 of her field recordings are housed at the Flanders Ballad Collection at Middlebury College. This collection is consulted frequently by folklorists and musicians locally, nationally, and internationally.
Deb Flanders, who has organized this concert series since the beginning, is a well-known vocalist in Vermont. Her musical background is wide-ranging, singing rock classics with the Burlington-based a cappella group Mixed Company and classical with the Burlington Choral Society. She is currently is a member of Bella Voce Women’s Chorus of VT. However, Deb’s musical path has been dedicated to performing many of the songs collected by her great-aunt Helen Hartness.
This year’s concert will feature Anna Roberts-Gevalt, a Vermont native who moved south to immerse herself in Appalachian music, has apprenticed with the masters of the Kentucky fiddle tradition: Bruce Greene, John Harrod and Paul David Smith, as well as banjo players Lee Sexton and Earl Thomas. She was a fellowship recipient at Berea College to do research into the lives of female fiddlers in Kentucky, and is in the process of filming a documentary about the Kentucky Clodhoppers, a central Kentucky stringband. She produced a compilation album of young traditional musicians The New Young Fogies, with Joseph DeJarnette; has taught at fiddle camps throughout the southeast, and is currently faculty coordinator of the Cowan Music School, Kentucky’s only traditional music school. NPR recently featured Anna and folk singer Elizabeth Laprelle on The Story with a segment called “Crank The Music” performing traditional Appalachian culture through music, story-telling and hand-made scrolls called “crankies”.
Pete Sutherland, Irish musician Eamon O'Leary, Vermont Symphony Orchestra cellist John Dunlop, violinists/fiddlers Laura Markowitz and Sofia Hirsch will round out the line-up for an afternoon of memorable music making.
General admission at the door: $15. For more info call 802-233-1015 or visit www.debflanders.net
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