Voiceworks' primary concert experience takes place on Saturday, July 3 at McCurdy Pavilion at Fort Worden State Park. The soaring structure, built in the early part of the 20th century to house dirigibles, has been transformed into one of the West's most distinctive performance venues.
And it is simply a stunning place to hear people sing.
Tickets for Saturday's McCurdy Pavilion show, as well as all other
Voiceworks performances, are available online,
or by calling 800-746-1982.
Saturday, July 3
Mountain, Roots
& Bluegrass
McCurdy Pavilion | 1:30 pm |
$16/$20/$32
- Elizabeth
LaPrelle: Applachian-style Mountain Vocals - Pharis and
Jason Romero: Old Time Songs from Vancouver Island - Blue Spruce
with Jenny Lester: Canadian Bluegrass - The Kings
of Mongrel Folk (Mark Graham and Orville Johnson): Acclaimed
Songwriter & Dobro Virtuoso - Laurie
Lewis and Tom Rozum: Bluegrass Female Vocalist of the Year with Ace
Mandolinist
Elizabeth LaPrelle
Twenty-one-year-old Elizabeth LaPrelle is exceptional in her devotion to
and mastery of the ancient and deep art of Appalachian unaccompanied
singing. She is renowned for her piercingly authentic mountain style and
the devotion and honesty with which she approaches the poetry of the
old songs. She sings with a sense of conviction, honor, honesty and an
emotional force that evokes the great Appalachian ballad singers of
generations past.
Pharis and Jason Romero
Pharis Romero is
an outstanding singer, songwriter, rhythm guitar player, and teacher,
and a respected figure in West Coast acoustic music circles. She is a prolific songwriter, influenced by early traditional music,
but looking to her Canadian home for songs about daily living – work, divorce, drug addiction, love
and death. She currently plays with old time trio The Haints, and
directs vocal and band workshops and the Old Time Vocal Choir in her
home of Cobble Hill, BC.
Blue Spruce with Jenny Lester
Jenny Lester's original songs, carefully crafted in the bluegrass convention, display a
contemporary freshness and vitality that breathes new life into the
fabled "high lonesome" sound. She is a veteran stage performer, beginning on the fiddle at age eight
with her family's Driftwood Canyon Family Band out of Smithers,
B.C. Now into 27 years touring the world with different configurations
of bands, Jenny most
recently toured with the Yukon-based bluegrass band, Hungry Hill.
Mark Graham and Orville Johnson
Songwriter Mark
Graham's harmonica virtuosity on Irish and American fiddle tunes and
his rich, woody sound on clarinet are well-known to Northwest acoustic
music mavens. His sardonic skewering of contemporary life in such songs as "I Can See
Your Aura and It's Ugly" and "Zen Gospel Singing," and his lampoons of
Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, sex change operations, the bible, Oedipus
Rex, Oral Roberts, and dinosaurs have become immortal to
singer-songwriters in the same way that fervent “Repo Man” followers
gave rise to the term “cult classic.”
Orville Johnson,
an instrumental gunslinger whom the Seattle Times describes as "the
player's player," has a gift of finding the secret ingredient that makes
a song sound letter-perfect, whether it's an R & B tune from New
Orleans, a country blues or a jazzy ballad. guitar, dobro, and quavering, honeyed vocals have seasoned more than a
hundred recordings, soundtracks and countless TV and radio commercials.
He’s an extraordinary and magnificent musician, with interests and
passions and contributions simply too wide to be categorized by
marketing bins.
Laurie Lewis and Tom Rozum
Though Laurie
Lewis has won a Grammy and has twice been named Bluegrass Female Vocalist
of the Year, you'll soon realize this soft-spoken, sweet-singing
California fiddler, singer and songwriter is something very special.
Since joining forces with Laurie more than 20 years ago, Tom's
versatility and diverse musical influences come to the fore every time
they play. He mostly plays mandolin, but is also an accomplished fiddle,
mandola, and guitar player. And he sings, the ideal harmony partner for
Laurie, as demonstrated on "The Oak and the Laurel," their
Grammy-nominated album of duets.