Thu 4/10 @ 3PM
Gusti is like a living encyclopedia of folk music history.
She was singing traditional folk songs even as a child, before she attended a hootenanny at a club in Cleveland Heights in 1961 and stumbled into a gig with a local group called the New Wine Singers who were heading to Chicago to work in the city’s booming folk scene.
In her subsequent years in music, there’s hardly any genre she hasn’t explored — Irish music, sea shanties, cowboy songs, German leider, Gilbert & Sullivan, union songs, hymns, Scottish-English ballads, blues, songs by Tom Paxton, Ian Tyson, and even (shudder) John Denver. Belted in her rich, powerful contralto, they all sound wonderful.
She performs only occasionally now, like at the recent Pete Seeger tribute at Nighttown. But you can catch an informal performance in the Kulas Music Room at Cleveland Heights’ Alcazar Hotel. She promises a “typically eclectic program.”
It’s free.