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Duke Arts Presents

Music in Your Gardens:
Kamara Thomas

Wednesday, August 5, 2020 | 7:00 pm


We’re proud to present Kamara Thomas as a part of Music in Your Gardens, a free eight-week online concert series showcasing nationally renowned artists who call Durham and the surrounding area home. The series shifts Duke Performances’ longtime summer series, Music in the Gardens, normally held outdoors at Sarah P. Duke Gardens on Duke’s campus, to an online format in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

On August 5 at 7 PM ET, we’ll premiere a new, specially recorded performance by Kamara online, free of charge, on our website and on our YouTube page. The film, pre-recorded in a socially-distanced manner, will be accompanied by a live YouTube chat with Kamara, who will answer questions from viewers.

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Durham-based Kamara Thomas’ songs lean toward the starry-eyed and the astral. That’s to say, Thomas writes and sings Americana from another world. (Before striking out as a solo artist, she was also the vocalist and bassist behind Earl Greyhound, an acclaimed blues rock band.) Thomas’ solo album, Tularosa: An American Dreamtime, to be released this year, will chart the mythical New Mexican landscape of Tularosa and serve as the soundtrack for a series of multi-disciplinary staged productions. Meanwhile, she trades in every kind of art-making: in 2019, she co-produced Country Soul Songbook, a musical performance, online platform, and documentary project that showcases diverse voices in country music. With each of her works, Thomas interrogates inheritance and sound, laying bare the history that resounds in a single note.

Duke Performances presents Music in Your Gardens in collaboration with Duke Arts, WXDU, Sarah P. Duke Gardens, Duke Continuing Studies, and Duke Summer Session. Hospitality partners include The Palace International and Locopops. Media sponsor: WUNC Music.

"Channeling dusty Americana, rootsy folk, and classic rock à la Neil Young, Kamara Thomas ... spins hazy narrative paeans to America’s epic landscape and mythic past."

Brooklyn Academy of Music