Événement

SALLY ROGERS & CLAUDIA SCHMIDT in concert

Sally Rogers performs an evening of traditional, contemporary and original ballads and song, interwoven with stories taken from her life as a performer, a wife and a mother. Throughout her concerts, she accompanies herself on guitar and Appalachian dulcimer, or performs without accompaniment in a voice that needs no further enhancement. Reviewers have described her voice in superlatives ranging from remarkable to mesmerizing. As one critic summarized, its really next to impossible to do justice to a voice of that quality. Much of the material performed by Sally includes compositions of her own, many of which are considered classics of the folk and popular genre.

Rogers began her career as a full-time touring musician in 1979, after encouragement from Stan Rogers, the legendary Canadian singer-songwriter. That was followed by an invitation from Garrison Keillor to appear on A Prairie Home Companion. She appeared more than a dozen times on that show, which launched her performing career. Her travels have since taken her to Europe, China, Hungary and Poland, England and Scotland and across the United States.

Claudia Schmidt may be from Michigan, but anyone who has experienced one of her live performances knows that the stage is her natural habitat. In three decades of touring professionally, she has covered a lot of ground in America and Europe, performing in intimate venues and on festival stages before 25,000 rapt listeners. Claudia has recorded fourteen albums, participated in the delightful Les Blank movie, "Gap-Toothed Women," performed on Public Radio International's "A Prairie Home Companion," and on stage in the musical "Bag Lady Tendencies" with Friends Mime Theater in Milwaukee. But her craft is at its height in live performance where she mines the humor and poignancy of our lives and shapes it into a one-woman revitalization movement.

Claudia has always hated categories, often referring to herself as a "creative noisemaker" a term that has irritated some critics as much as it has delighted many audiences who learn to expect anything at a Schmidt concert: a hymn, poem, bawdy verse, torch song, satire and the gamut of emotions. Attending a Claudia Schmidt concert is, as one critic wryly observed, "...a lot like falling in love."