NextThreeDays: Event Display

Movie Screening: The Ballad of Shirley Collins with Opening Set by Anna & Elizabeth
Venue: Floyd Country Store, Floyd
Directions: Google Map Link
Organizations: Anna & Elizabeth
Date: Tuesday, November 6, 2018
Time: 7:30 - 10:00 PM
Event Types: Music, Arts & Theatre
Cost:
Advance Tickets: $12.00 At the Door: $15.00

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Description:
The Floyd Country Store presents movie screening of "The Ballad of Shirley Collins" with Opening Music Set by Anna & Elizabeth on Tuesday, November 6, 2018.

Event Schedule:
• 7:30 pm: Anna & Elizabeth opening set
• 8:15 pm: Movie Screening
• 9:50 pm: Short Q&A with Movie Producers follows

Widely regarded as the 20th century’s most important singer of English traditional song, Shirley Collins is someone who was born to invoke the old songs. Alongside her sister Dolly, Shirley stood at the epicentre of the folkmusic revival during the 1960s and 1970s. But in 1980 she developed a disorder of the vocal chords known as dysphonia, which robbed her of her unique singing voice and forced her into early retirement.

Deliberately eschewing a straightforward biopic approach, Rob Curry and Tim Plester ‘Way of the Morris’, is a lyrical response to the life-and-times of a totemic musical figure. Granted intimate access to recording sessions for Shirley’s first album (Lodestar) of new recordings in almost four decades, the film also features contributions from the comedian Stewart Lee and David Tibet of Current 93 What emerges is a meditative and carefully textured piece of portraiture. A timely delve into the arterial blood, loam and tears of our haunted island nation.

Counterpointing the film’s contemporary journey with a more literal one taken from the opposite end of Shirley’s life, The Ballad Of Shirley Collins also proves itself to be something of a time-travelling Transatlantic road-movie of sorts – utilising a motherlode of genuine archive audio to recount the tale of her seminal 1959 song-collecting trip around America’s rural Deep South alongside her then-lover (and legendary ethnomusicologist) Alan Lomax. A trip on which they uncovered and documented the music that would later inspire the soundtrack to the Coen Brothers’ film O Brother Where Art Thou.

More than 3-and-a-half years in the making, and co-produced with Fifth Column Films and Burning Bridges The Ballad Of Shirley Collins is the first release from Fire Films; the new film arm of the revitalised Fire Records and sister label Earth Recordings.

A collaboration between Anna Roberts-Gevalt and Elizabeth Laprelle, the pair’s growing acclaim springs from a shared quartet of talents: Both are historians, storytellers, visual artists, and gifted, intuitive musicians—in combination, a groundbreaking approach.

Inspired by the richness and tradition of the music, Anna & Elizabeth gather songs and stories from archives and visits with elders. They bring these songs to life in performance with sparse, atmospheric arrangements using guitar, banjo, fiddle, and the uncanny blend of their voices in close harmony. They accompany their songs with stories—of the lyrics, of the singer, of the quest to learn the song—and they illustrate them in mesmerizing fashion. The two revive the old scrolling picture show, dubbed “crankies”—intricate picture-scrolls illustrating the old songs they sing, which they create in tandem with papercuts, shadow puppets, prints, and embroidered fabric.

Anna & Elizabeth met in 2011, and their work has brought them to stages across the world, including the Atlanta Museum of Modern Art; folk festivals in Brooklyn, the Yukon, Chicago, Maine, and Uzbekistan; residencies at universities; summer traditional music schools; and small theaters and folk clubs across the U.S. and U.K.

Their second album, which features Grammy nominee and legendary folk singer Alice Gerrard, was released March 2015 on Free Dirt Records. It has been featured on Vice’s Noisey, the Huffington Post, No Depression, and NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert series.

This winter, Anna & Elizabeth are beginning a new cycle of work, inspired by ballad singers of the 1930s and 1940s in Vermont and Virginia—the states where they grew up. Spending time in archives, with the families of these singers, and with a director, Anna & Elizabeth with explore connections between place and tradition to develop a new show, a new set of crankies, and a new album inspired by these ballads.

Links:

• http://www.annaandelizabeth.com/
• https://www.facebook.com/annaandelizabeth

Advance tickets are $12.00 and $15.00 at the door.

To purchase tickets online, visit: https://www.floydcountrystore.com/event/the-ballad-of-shirley-collins-screening-with-anna-elizabeth-2018-11-06.

For more information, visit: https://www.floydcountrystore.com/event/the-ballad-of-shirley-collins-screening-with-anna-elizabeth-2018-11-06 or https://www.facebook.com/floydcountrystore or https://www.facebook.com/events/2177885712470234/ or call 540-745-4563.