Arts Center offers concert
The concert slated June 20 in Dillon Park, Woodbury, features “The Song Catcher” with Carol Ponder and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” with The Princely Players. The Southern Heritage Music Concert Series will conclude Sept. 20 with the Billy Womack Bluegrass Festival.
In the tradition of the Jubilee Singers and the Fairfield Four, The Princely Players offer evocative and stunning programs on the enslavement and liberation of African-Americans. The eight-member ensemble has performed their unique program of spirituals, work songs, hymns and songs of freedom at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, Yale University, Ryman Auditorium, Little Rock’s Festival of Religious Arts and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., among many others.
Growing up in the mountains of western North Carolina during the 50s and 60s, Carol Ponder was surrounded by many kinds of music from old-time and contemporary folk to Beethoven and Wagner. Ponder’s deep Appalachian roots are reflected in her rich, well-mannered voice.
She is an accomplished guitarist and autoharpist and incorporates both as well as playing spoons into her show. A 2002 recipient of the Tennessee Arts Commission Ingram Fellowship for Excellence in Music, Ponder has performed regularly in Nashville and around the Northeast, as well as overseas at the Ulster American Folk Park’s Appa-lachian and Bluegrass Festival.