@STRAZ CENTER
MONDAY, MARCH 26, 7:30PM
JAEB THEATER
Straz Center for the Performing Arts
presents
Anna & Elizabeth
as part of
Club Jaeb
SPONSORED BY
The pioneering partnership of 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 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.
Their new album, The Invisible Comes to Us, released on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings,
is a spellbinding reconfiguration of ancient folk ballads that sees the duo’s immersion in
Appalachian music move to a place of boundless experimentation. Joining the duo on The
Invisible Comes to Us are drummer Jim White of The Dirty Three, and experimental pedal
steel player Susan Alcorn, whose perceptive musicianship helped create the sonic world that
Anna and Elizabeth visualized for these songs, a world that also brought in brass, woodwinds
and synths. The album was co-produced by Anna with Benjamin Lazar Davis from avant-pop
outfit Cuddle Magic, who brought new technologies and tools to the pair’s recording process –
while his partiality for structure and detail acted as a welcome counter-force to Anna’s more
intuitive composing methods.
Many of the ideas for the record were stitched together during artist residencies that Anna
and Elizabeth undertook at the MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts,
following a year of song collecting. The result is a record where the sounds themselves are
integral to the retelling of these tales, alongside the sometimes cryptic and complex narratives
of the sung and spoken words.
“These are songs we first heard in small archives in our home states, Vermont and Virginia,”
the duo wrote in the sleeve notes to the album. “Recordings made in living rooms and kitchens,
of songs learned in childhood. The characters, and the landscapes they occupied, grew rich in
our minds. This record grew out of the desire to show you the world we saw in these songs.”
With The Invisible Comes to Us, Anna & Elizabeth are revealing what they find buried
between the lines of traditional music; showing us what they see. The result is an immersive,
novelistic and groundbreaking exploration of old and nearly-forgotten songs.
annaandelizabeth.com
The taking of photographs and/or use of other recording equipment is strictly prohibited.
Program information provided by the cast and/or production company.
TICKETS: 813.229.STAR (7827) • STRAZCENTER.ORG 63
/annaandelizabeth.com
/STRAZCENTER.ORG