A CD release concert of Lisa Null's long-awaited Legacies. The two-cd album is being released on the Folk-Legacy label. "Legacies ?, made with the help of several Washington-area friends and musicians, features many of Lisa's own songs and tunes as well as a huge range of traditional material. Some of Lisa's friends who accompanied her on the recording project may come and join her at the concert.
Lisa has been unearthing and singing traditional folksongs all her life. While they are not the only songs she loves, they convey messages from the past to the present from people who have much to tell us that is touching, inspiring, or just plain fun. When Lisa sings, she creates a community where boundaries of time and culture disappear, if only for a moment, through the magic of choruses, refrains, and deep listening.
Lisa co-founded the Green Linnet record label with sixties folk star Pat Sky. During their years of active involvement in the early 1970s, the Connecticut company issued recordings of pathfinding musicians they both admired: Seamus Ennis, Peter Bellamy, Joe Heaney, Margaret MacArthur, Rosalie Sorrels. Soon, however, Lisa found herself touring nationally and internationally with Bill Shute, former lead guitarist for a hit rock group "The Fifth Estate. ? Bill had trained as a jazz guitarist and especially loved the stanzaic pattern of most old folksongs because they gave him plenty of opportunity to play around with a tune as the words suggested, often using banjo tunings on his guitar and working with pulsing rhythms. Together, Lisa and Bill performed many times on Garrison Keillor's " A Prairie Home Companion ? as well as most of the major folk festivals in Canada and the United States. Lisa and Bill also made several tours of England and the United States with Peter Bellamy. They developed a reputation for their arrangements of songs for which no previous accompaniments were likely to exist. When Bill got married, Lisa quit touring, passed Green Linnet on to its manager Wendy Newton, and returned to college and graduate school, combining studies in history, folklore, and anthropology. The two original Green Linnet recordings of Lisa Null and Bill Shute ("The Feathered Maiden ? and "American Primitive ?) have been re-released by Folk-Legacy Records.
In 1991, Lisa moved to the Washington D.C. area where she could combine interesting work with a lively folk music community. She taught all facets of American Musical Life in courses at Georgetown University, picked up a library degree, and worked as a reference librarian and writer/editor at the Library of Congress until cancer forced her to retire on disability. Working from home since the late 1990s, she sings (a cappella for the most part), teaches voice, and coaches other performers while taking on research and editorial projects, one book at a time.
The performances on this new CD show the fruits of her DC-area musical friendships. Some of the songs and tunes were written here, some predate her move to Washington, but most of her songs are traditional. Join us in the parish hall of the Church of the Ascension in Silver Spring for an evening of songs created and sung with great heart.
Admission $15 / Students and children $12
