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Simple Gifts, an award-winning female trio of musicians who have mastered 12 instruments, will present an eclectic mix of ethnic folk styles 4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 23, at the Williams Center for the Arts.
Tickets are free with student ID, $4 for faculty and staff, $15 for other adults, and $5 for community youth and students. They may be purchased by calling the box office at 610-330-5009.
Simple Gifts will give a free workshop on klezmer music 2 p.m. the day of the concert at the Williams Center in a setting ideal for adults and families. The concert will include klezmer music taught at the workshop. The workshop and concert are a co-presentation with Temple Covenant of Peace, Easton.
Drawing on an impressive variety of ethnic folk styles, Simple Gifts plays everything from lively Irish jigs and down-home American reels to hard-driving Klezmer frailachs and haunting Gypsy melodies, spicing the mix with the distinctive rhythms of Balkan dance music, the lush sounds of Scandinavian twin fiddling, and original compositions written in a traditional style.
Combining tradition with innovation, Simple Gifts creates some of the finest arrangements in folk music today: swing fiddle creeps into a Romanian dance, spoons show up in an Irish reel, and the concertina ventures far beyond styles considered traditional for that instrument.
Based in the hills of central Pennsylvania, these women play an amazing array of instruments. Linda Littleton, Rachel Hall, and Karen Hirshon switch with ease among two fiddles, concertina, mandolin, banjolin, recorders, bowed psaltery, hammered dulcimer, baritone fiddle, guitar, piano, and percussion.
Simple Gifts is frequently complimented on its stage presence, which is warm, personal, and accented with humor.
“Few musicians can match the warmly personal stage presence Simple Gifts possess,” notes the Celtic Classic Festival in Bethlehem.
Susquehanna Folk Music Society states, “Simple Gifts is a treasurea delightful mix of music, talent, and personalities.”
Littleton founded the group in 1989, and it has been performing as Simple Gifts since 1995. It has performed throughout the mid-Atlantic region, including appearances at the Philadelphia Folk Festival, Longwood Gardens, Hershey Theatre, Smith Opera House, Ontario Center for Performing Arts, Godfrey Daniels, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and dozens of colleges.
Simple Gifts has recorded five albums. The latest, Time and Again, won a Bronze Star from Crossroads Music.
The Simple Gifts visit to Lafayette is supported by Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour, with funding from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Vira I. Heinz Foundation, the William Penn Foundation, and the Pew Charitable Trust.
The nationally recognized Performance Series attracts more than 10,000 people each season. It has been cited for performing excellence by the National Endowment for the Arts, National Dance Project, Chamber Music America, Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund, Pennsylvania Arts and Humanities Councils, and Association of Performing Arts Presenters.
The 2003-04 Performance Series at Lafayette is supported in part by gifts from Friends of the Williams Center for the Arts; by the F.M. Kirby Foundation; by provisions of the Alan and Wendy Pesky Artist-in-Residence Program, the James Bradley Fund, and the Ed Brunswick Jazz Fund; and by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour, and New England Foundation for the Arts.