Sat 5/20 @ 8PM
It’s long overdue for Cain Park’s summer season to start earlier and go later; it always seemed like a waste to start in June and pull the plug in mid-August. Its small, open-sided Evans Amphitheater is such a lovely summer venue for more intimate concerts than those hosted by Traffic Jam on the Falls … er, Blossom Music Center.
And its season, which runs through mid-September this year, starts this weekend with the type of show enjoyed by this leaning-older Cleveland Heights audience: folk singer Judy Collins.
The now 84-year-old singer, a classically trained pianist and self-taught guitarist, made her recording debut in 1961 with A Maid of Constant Sorrow, which featured traditional songs such as the title tune, “John Riley,” “The Rising of the Moon” and “O Dad Be Gay.” But she was soon recording tunes by some of the hottest songwriters of the ’60s folk revival, including Bob Dylan, Eric Anderson, Phil Ochs and Gordon Lightfoot, as well as their inspirations, Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie.
By the time she released her fifth album In My Life in 1966, a more sophisticated, theatrical side to her work was coming out as she recorded songs by Leonard Cohen, Kurt Weill and Jacques Brel, and she soon began writing her own songs as well. She also introduced Joni Mitchell with her 1967 recording of Mitchell’s “Both Sides, Now,” which was a top 10 hit.
A lifer in the art of making music, she has released 36 studio albums and never gone more than five years without releasing one (and only twice in her career has gone more than three years). Her latest is 2022’s Spellbound, for which she wrote all the tracks.
At Cain Park she’ll be performing with a 27-piece orchestra of local musicians. She’ll be performing her 1967 album Wildflowers, which features her versions of “Both Side Now and Mitchell’s “Michael From Mountains,” along with three Leonard Cohen songs, a Jacques Brel song and Collins’ first original songs, in its entirety, as well as other songs from throughout her career.
Go here for more information and tickets.