Search results for ""Author Elizabeth Thomson""

Since she stepped onstage unannounced at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival, Joan Baez has occupied a singular place in popular music. Within three years, she had recorded three best-selling albums and had embarked on a tour of southern US campuses, playing to integrated audiences in an era of segregation. When Time magazine chronicled the folk revival in November 1962, her portrait was on the cover. Her voice was “as lustrous and rich as old gold.” She has mentored generations of singer-songwriters, most famously Bob Dylan. But Joan Baez has always been much more than simply a singer. Even before she stood on the podium beside Dr Martin Luther King at the March on Washington, her voice was raised in sorrow and anger as well as in song. The causes for which she has campaigned are legion and it’s no surprise that she was chosen to open Live Aid in Philadelphia in 1985. In 1993, amid the siege of Bosnia, she donned a flak jacket to sing for the citizens of Sarajevo offering, as so many times before and since, “an act of love, sharing, witness and music”. Now approaching 80, Baez has stepped down from the stage following a worldwide farewell tour and a final Grammy-nominated album. The Last Leaf is a celebration of a timeless figure whose music and influence will endure long after her voice is silenced. The Discography is by Grammy-nominated music historian Arthur Levy. Joan Baez is the recipient of the 2020 Woody Guthrie Prize.

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In 1974, musician and composer Jo Collins met Mary Ward, a teacher and director. With a shared belief in harnessing the creativity in everyone and anyone, they started a theatre company. In a chicken shed. The rest, as they say, is history. Forty years on, Chickenshed is a unique theatre company that makes beautiful challenging, pioneering and inspirational theatre, and the concept of inclusion that seemed so obvious to Jo and Mary is now an international movement with a mission to change the world. Thousands of people have enjoyed Chickenshed shows, major figures such as Princess Diana and Judi Dench have supported their work, and many lives have been changed by the company's ability to bring together young people from all backgrounds, races and abilities. Chickenshed: An Awfully Big Adventure charts the story of this incredible theatre company, to commemorate its 40th anniversary.

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Terri Thal was very much a part of the folk music world in 1960s Greenwich Village, New York. Few people know that she was 21-year-old Bob Dylan's first manager prior to his contract with Albert Grossman and Columbia Records. She also managed musician Dave Van Ronk (who later became her husband), and others to include the Roche sisters, Paul Geremia and The Holy Modal Rounders. She booked performances at coffee houses, clubs and basket houses. In fall 1961, she recorded a set Bob did at the Gaslight. This audition tape she took to clubs and concert producers, trying to get him gigs - the original she still owns! When Dave Van Ronk first saw young Bob performing in a club in Greenwich Village he said 'I just heard this kid who's a fucking genius. You've got to hear him.' Within a few days Terri heard him play and agreed with Dave. Bob Dylan asked Terri, 'Would you get me gigs?' Terri Thal has two passions: folk music and social justice. This is a personal story of the world of folk music in 1960s New York written by a Jewish woman from Brooklyn who, although not a musician, was an intrinsic part of this scene. Terri describes Greenwich Village as a community that was supportive, musically exciting and one in which people had fun. She had many friends in Greenwich Village including Suze Rotolo and a number of seminal 1960s folk musicians. Terri tells us what it was like to hang out in the Village coffee houses and basket houses, to host folk singers like Tom Paxton and Phil Ochs who hung out at her apartment, and to be a manager. We hear her view and involvement of the 1960s socialist organizations, and how she later merged her professional work in not- for-profit agencies.

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