CD release concert
Sunday, May 18 ?
8 pm at WES
FSGW is marking our 50th anniversary by celebrating our music and our community, and this CD-release event gives us a fine opportunity for a celebration.
As the daughter of FSGW founding members Helen and Sol Schneyer, Riki Schneyer has been part of the FSGW community since its beginning. Born into a family of musicians, visual artists, and activists, she has been making music and art since before she could stand up. The Schneyer household where she grew up in Kensington, MD served as a gathering place for musicians, tradition bearers, budding artists and revivalists who lived in and passed through the Washington area. It was a treasure trove of multicultural influences: blues singers, ballad collectors, Scottish weavers, musicians from all parts of the British Isles, American old-time singers and players from north to south. Riki was an integral part of the gatherings around the dining table and the music-making in the parlor. How could she fail to absorb this vast cross-section of multicultural influences that passed through her life there?
She has performed on stages all over the country, and recorded with a motley crew of folks. On her mother?s recordings, you can hear Riki?s soprano soaring over Helen?s hearty contralto, frequently harmonizing with FSGW founding members Jonathan Eberhart and Andy Wallace.
These days Riki freely admits to being a tenor, which she says she discovered singing with the Washington Revels; she was a lead singer for their Quebecois-themed production.
A particular love is unaccompanied singing, especially from the African American, Appalachian, and British Isles traditions, and both her music and her visual art reflect her passion and intensity. Yes, she is an active visual artist as well; that?s what has been on her website. She also works with "Art for the People," a non-profit organization that brings the life-enhancing pleasures of making art to "at risk" populations, and after 30 years as a psychotherapist, she?s moving into a new chapter, releasing her long-awaited CD, for which she painted the cover portrait. We think she?ll need to include music information on that website.
The self-released recording, Children of Zion, includes just a small part of her repertoire and ranges from Child Ballads to Georgia Sea Islands classics, songs from New England to Appalachia to New Orleans, from the Carter Family to Rev. Gary Davis. For this concert Riki has invited several friends and relatives to join us, including Jennifer Cutting and Steve Winick (co-conspirators in the ?Hey, Sailor? bawdy song show you might have seen recently), and husband Milan Pavich, among others, from nearby and far afield. Her cousins, "the Free-Range Orphans," will be there. Even Larry Hanks and Deborah Robins from Berkeley, California, will be there. She suggests that we bring our voices and looks forward to lusty audience participation on many traditional songs.
Join Riki Schneyer and friends for a CD release and Folklore Society family gathering at 8 pm on Sunday evening, May 18, at the Washington Ethical Society Auditorium, 7750 16th St., NW, Washington, DC.
General admission $20, FSGW members $15, students $10.
