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Duke Arts Presents

Music in the Gardens: Anna & Elizabeth

Wednesday, July 18, 2018 | 7:00 pm

Sarah P. Duke Gardens


Anna & Elizabeth have transformed a shared passion for Appalachian folk songs and archival research into an evocative take on bluegrass. Picking up where Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard left off, Elizabeth LaPrelle and Anna Roberts-Gevalt have dedicated themselves to capturing the souls of ancient songs, extracting their essence, and presenting them with lustrous close harmonies and a moving, minimalist sound. Their latest album on Smithsonian Folkways, The Invisible Comes to Us, is built from a year’s worth of research into the special collections of Vermont’s Middlebury College, and fuses synthesizers, brass, and chopped recordings with traditional folk instrumentation. It’s an impeccable mix of interpretative vision and delicacy that creates vivid new settings for the sounds and stories of the past. “If you’ve never thought your tastes would lean to mountain music, take a deep breath and soak it all in” (NPR).

Duke Performances’ 2018 Music in the Gardens is made possible, in part, with support from Duke Continuing Studies, Duke Summer Session & The Sarah P. Duke Gardens.

Anna & Elizabeth 'NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert'

Anna & Elizabeth 'Mother in the Graveyard'

Anna & Elizabeth 'Little Black Train'


"The duo plays a variety of rollicking instrumentals and traditional tunes, but in live performances, it's the storytelling ballads that are the show-stoppers."

Vice