Blues at Centrum

Gospel Singing Workshop

This post refers to an event that occurred in the past. For current event/workshop information, visit www.centrum.org/blues, and follow the workshop or performance links at the top right.

The Port Townsend Country Blues Festival's "Gospel Singing" option gives gospel singing tools to participants who want to learn how to sing with joy and passion.

Led by Shirley Smith, the minister of music at the Potter's House Christian Fellowship in Jacksonville, Florida, the workshop meets daily (M-F July 30 - August 3) from 3:30- 5pm. Cost is only $100 and includes free admission to the Saturday afternoon blues mainstage show on August 4, at 1:30pm.

Shirley Smith has shared the stage with many of gospel music's most prolific artists, including Cece and Vicki Winans, Yolanda Adams, Mark Kibble, Bruce Allen, and Fred Hammond. She is renowned for her teaching ability and her authentic connection to the roots of the music.

Summer Tickets Now On Sale

We're pleased to announce that tickets are now on sale for Centrum's summer performances at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend. Highlights of the 2007 summer season include:

• Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Paul Moravec and Trio Solisti anchor the Port Townsend Chamber Music Festival, led by new Artistic Director Helen Callus.
• Centrum's June 10 special sneak preview of the Seattle Men’s Chorus’ new show “Scared Faithless,” a look at religion through the lens of experiences by gay men and women.
• South African teaspoon slide guitar player Hannes Coetzee and Grammy winning vocalist Laurie Lewis performing at the combined Voiceworks/Port Townsend Slide & Steel Festival.
• National Heritage Award fellows Liz Carroll and Paul Dahlin, along with the Carolina Chocolate Drops and dozens more, turning up the temperature during the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes.
• Writers Eileen Myles, Arthur Sze, Thomas Glave Camille Dungy and others whom Artistic Director Rebecca Brown says “work beyond the bounds of well-behaved American literature” at the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference.
• Roberta Gambarini, the Banda Brothers Latin All-Stars and NEA Jazz Master Gerald Wilson joining Artistic Director John Clayton and others at Jazz Port Townsend, Washington’s longest-running summer jazz festival.
• The Port Townsend Country Blues Festival, the nation’s largest gathering of acoustic blues musicians, welcomes National Heritage Award winners Eddie Pennington, Henry Gray and John Cephas, as well as Robert Belfour and many more.

Information on ordering tickets is available on our Information Center site.

Paul and Annie

Acclaimed blues duo Paul Rishell and Annie Raines will be hanging out at the 2007 Port Townsend Country Blues Festival, teaching, jamming, and telling stories. On Saturday, August 4, at 1:30 pm they'll be playing a full mainstage set at Fort Worden's McCurdy Pavilion.

As Living Blues notes, "Singing guitarist Paul Rishell and his harmonica-blowing partner Annie Raines have fashioned a fine career for themselves through their refreshing rearrangements of vintage blues, mostly of the rural sort."

A teenager during most of the 1960s, Paul started out as a drummer in a surf-rock band. But a friend turned him on to the music of Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and others, and Paul was hooked for life. In the decades since, he has played with Son House, Johnny Shines, Sonny Terry, and Howlin' Wolf.

The blues muse struck Annie during her teenage years as well, which were in the 1980s. While her friends were listening to Pink Floyd, Annie became enthralled by the Muddy Waters and Sony Boy Williamson. She traveled to Chicago to play with Pinetop Perkins, Louis Myers, and James Cotton. About her, Pinetop said: "She plays so good it hurts!"

Together, Paul and Annie have released I Want You to Know and Moving to the Country, as well as their newest release: Goin' Home. In 2000, the duo won the W.C. Handy Award for Acoustic Blues Album of the Year.