Old World Ballads & the Mountain Dulcimer, A tribute concert to Andrew Rowan Summers

The Virginia Highlands Festival will present “Old-World Ballads and the Mountain Dulcimer,” a special concert featuring four of the Appalachian region’s foremost ballad singers. Elizabeth LaPrelle of Rural Retreat, Sarah Kate Morgan of Hindman, KY, Corbin Hayslett of Floyd, and Jack Hinshelwood of Abingdon will perform individually and together to showcase the remarkable legacy of Abingdon ballad singer and dulcimer player Andrew Rowan Summers. These artists will present ballads from Summers’ repertoire as well as from their own.

Born in Abingdon in 1912, Andrew Rowan Summers was a renaissance man - an attorney, law publications editor, businessman, interior furnishings designer, and antiques dealer. But his first love was music, and upon entering the University of Virginia in 1930 he majored in music before obtaining his law degree in 1935. In between, he attended the well-known White Top Folk Festival, and that was where he became captivated by the arts he would pursue for the remainder of his life – ballad singing and playing the mountain dulcimer. The concert will include a presentation on Summers' remarkable life in music and his significant contributions to the world of folk music.

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