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Community Corner

Ani DiFranco

Ani DiFranco



iCal
Import

March 8, 2014 8:00 pm


Fully reserved seating.


The theatre has seats in all rows. There are no “standing room”
sections. Reserved seats are Row A – T with General Admission in Rows U –
BB.

Official Website                 Facebook Page


 

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After 20 years in the music biz, self-described “Little Folksinger”
Ani DiFranco is still technically little, although her influence on
fellow musicians, activists, and indie-minded people the world over has
been huge. She still proudly identifies as a folksinger, too, but her
understanding of that term has always been far more expansive than a bin
at the record store or a category on iTunes, with ample room for soul,
funk, jazz, electronic music, spoken word, and a marching band or two.
Over the course of more than 20 albums, including the live double CD
Living in Clip (1997) and the two-disc career retrospective Canon
(2007), as well as the latest one, ¿Which Side are You On? (2012), Ani
has never stopped evolving, experimenting, testing the limits of what
can be said and sung. Her lifelong tribe of co-conspirators includes
everyone from Pete Seeger and the late Utah Phillips to a new generation
of twentysomething singer-songwriters who grew up with her songs and
shows — and then there’s the motley crew of folks like Prince, Maceo
Parker, Andrew Bird, Dr. John, Arto Lindsay, Bruce Springsteen, Chuck D,
the Buffalo Philharmonic, Gillian Welch, Cyndi Lauper, and even Burmese
activist and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, with whom she has crossed
paths in a myriad of ways.


Born in Buffalo, New York in 1970, Ani spent part of her twenties in
New York City, then returned to her hometown where she established first
a business office and then a performance venue called Babeville as the
twentieth century ground to a halt and the twenty-first one revved up.
For much of the last decade she’s been based in New Orleans — but at her
core she’s always seen herself as “a traveler,” covering pretty much
the four corners of the earth by now, both solo and with her band.
(There’s less corner-covering these days, now that she’s consciously
slowing down a bit and raising a daughter with partner and co-producer
Mike Napolitano, but she still gets around just fine, playing venues
like Madison Square Garden for Pete Seeger’s ninetieth birthday bash and
another star-studded lineup at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan for Wavy
Gravy’s seventy-fifth.)

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Early in her career, Ani made a choice that is now so obvious to so
many people that it’s hard to remember it was once considered brazen: to
say no to every record label deal that came her way, and yes to being
her own boss. That decision has earned her plenty of attention over the
years, but it has never been what brought sold-out crowds to her shows
around the world, fans debating every nuance of her lyrics, and fellow
performers clamoring to work with her. No, all that has more to do with
another choice she made early in life: To use her voice and her guitar
as honestly and unflinchingly as she could, writing and playing songs
that came straight from her own experience, her boundless imagination,
her sharp wit, and her ever-more-nuanced understanding of how the world
works. She did it in noisy bars with nothing but a shaved head and a
lone guitar in 1990, and she’s doing it with renewed intensity today.


 




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