Heather Kropf: News

The tribute concert for Joni that I am participating in has been announced at her website.

Some year I'll do something from "...Summer Lawns" which just might be my favorite of her albums. But this year I'm doing one request off of my email list, plus attempting to learn what I think is her all-time sexiest song, Two Grey Rooms, and at least one other.

We'll see. I gotta love my arrangements or it's just not worth the attempt. 

Hope to see every last Joni fan in the 'burgh at this show! 

Due to illness I will be unable to perform my September shows in Oregon and Washington. I am very sorry to cancel when I had been looking forward to the trip for months. Please consider attending the Portland Playhouse Theater show this Friday, September 11, regardless of whether or not I'm there. It'll be a good show, plus my CDs might be lurking about and you can get one for only $10. - Heather

Well, it seems I'm spending more time working on the house than playing music. Ironic that my new album is called Hestia. Anyhow, I'm looking forward to heading west for a week of shows in September. If you'd like to be on the list for the tour news, please sign up on my email list and indicate that you'd like information about my NW shows. Be happy to stay in touch. - Heather

Video by Jill Wiggins.

The AcoustiCafe stage will be right in among the artists' market, with music on Saturdays and Sundays from 1-4 pm. The line-ups are a wonderful collection of some of the best singer/songwriters Pittsburgh has to offer. No kidding. The community is growing and collaborating.

The Too Tall Americanos are on June 13. The day is hosted by Brad Yoder, and former Pittsburgher, Jenna Nicholls will be returning from NYC for a performance (and finally has an album. yay!). Also performing that day are incredibly charismatic singers like Mark Williams and Sean Atkins, newly national-signed Pittsburgher, Emily Rodgers, and the wonderfully entertaining Jimbo Jackson and The Inclines.

I'm a fan!

Keith's pottery will be at the Union Project booth and our EPs and full-length albums will be at the AcoustiCafe booth (along with Jenna's. Did I mention she has an album now?).

Ok, see you there.....

I really enjoyed seeing folks I haven't seen in a while, and playing music with the band last night. Thank you to everyone who turned out. I'll post the songs and possibly some video as soon as we have everything mixed down. - Heather

So, I'm thrilled to announce that the Americanos will be getting a short slot at the Three Rivers Arts Festival. Details are forthcoming. Please check back here or the Americanos website for updates....and stop down to see the lovely art and hear great acoustic music.

Keith and I really enjoyed playing music over the weekend. Thanks to the friends who hosted us, shared food with us and listened to our songs. We hope to return before another year goes by! More Too Tall Americanos concerts listed here.

I am very honored to be the subject of Jill Wiggins first documentary on artists and their process. We'll be working at this over the summer and should have something finished before the end of the year.

Visit Jill's Site

Big thanks to WYEP 91.3 FM for adding "Shine" to their Local News podcast. Click here to listen. It's the 3/13/2009 episode.

PRESS RELEASE: For Immediate Release
Contact: Maree Gallagher, TR Creative Services, (412) 977-6935, trcreativeservices@gmail.com

Pittsburgh, PA – It is fitting that Heather Kropf’s new album “Hestia” is released in the grayness of winter, the season that chases our daylight and folds us up within ourselves. At this time of year, when we are inexorably drawn by that magnetic pull of home, Kropf‘s music is a beckoning candle in the window.

This new release is at once both rich and spare and resonant with Steinway loveliness. Kropf’s lush voice is paramount, a nod to those who have longed for its prominence. Most arrangements are elegantly unobtrusive, allowing her gifts to surface in all their finespun glory. Some songs are old favorites and some are soon to be. An album by Heather Kropf is made to be played with recidivist abandon, until you have all the harmonies dancing in your head.

Hestia, the Greek Goddess of Hearth and Home, watches over her namesake here. The listener can feel her divine, muse-like presence. Kropf says, “Hestia’s life and symbolism challenged me to lay my songs bare and keep them close to their origin, but probably the biggest thing about this project, compared to my others, is that I allowed myself to listen to my intuition.”
She also listened to her fans. She took a fan survey early on, asking for their favorites to be included (Downtown and Come Around from Sky; Edges of the Day and Kite from What Else is Love) and each is presented with new instrumentation and a slightly different arrangement. Kropf’s intent was to represent her live performance sound which has evolved to include longtime friend and collaborator Keith Hershberger on rhythm guitar and harmonies, and Vince Camut on lead guitars (pedal steel, electric, acoustic and dobro). Two songs were re-makes of Kropf’s own choosing – Shine and Madrigal from Sky. This version of Shine is in a lower register, allowing the listener to chime in with the high harmony from the original version.

Three of the five new songs feature female protagonists. The fourth track, Grace, has a very Joni-esque piano, but the melody is all Kropf. It portrays Grace as someone lurking, waiting for an invitation, and leaving tell-tale evidence behind:

“There she goes; she was standing right before you,
There she goes; who knows if she’ll be back this way again…
Will you let her go?
Past all the ways she’s known you?
Will you let her call you home?”
The seventh track, Devolving, evokes a calliope rhythm, and lays on a lovely clarinet solo from the legendary Benny Benack. Joni’s influence returns again on the ninth track, Our Lady of Constant Motion, and this time we hear her in both piano and melody. The lady in question is too busy, by design, to be distracted by love:
“In the spaces underneath are fault lines and fissures
too wide to breach?
We could slip outside our selves
Disappear into no space between us,
but there’s all this work to be done…”
With Hestia, as Kropf says, “the songs bridge the past and give a direction for my future.” She will celebrate that future in a CD release on January 17th, 8pm at Your Inner Vagabond in Lawrenceville. Admission is $8.

Keith and I put together a Too Tall Americanos sampler EP this month, and we're releasing it over Labor Day weekend at the Moon Dancer Winery Folk Festival.

It has 6 songs, a few new ones and a few old ones. Please contact me by email (see the contact page for address). We're not really sure what to sell them for so you can make a donation of your choice, or give us $5-15, whatever you can afford.

Happy holiday weekend,
Heather

Apparently I have a fan club started on facebook. That's so totally cool & sweet at the same time.

Hi all. The Americanos now has a myspace page. We've also got a nice line-up of free, outdoor shows this summer. Come on out and hear what we're up to! _ Heather

Chris Smither had me blissfully lulled by his low gruff voice and his easy guitar style. I sat up on the balcony against the back wall after my opening set. His words and rhymes are masterful; his harmonic variations stunning. If someone would've given me a blanket I would have drifted to sleep and dreamt the sweetest dreams....
Calliope Folk Music Society invited me to do a 4-song set for Chris's sold out show at the Carnegie Lecture Hall. Vince joined me on pedal steel and Keith played guitar and did some fine back vocals on "Wish" "Edges of the Day" "Shine" and "Kite".

What a treat to run into friends and meet new people during intermission. If you have a chance to catch Chris Smither on his endless tour schedule, I highly recommend it!

Tracy Drach, Eve Goodman and myself all performed live at the Children's Museum as the Riveting Rosies on January 5 for the Saturday Light Brigade. You can hear the show by visiting the Saturday Light Brigade online.

PRESS RELEASE

Pittsburgh, PA - Club Café, widely regarded as the best listening room in the city, is pleased to host the return of AcoustiCafé’s Open Stage starting Monday, January 7th at 7pm. This kickoff event will feature all three of AcoustiCafé’s regular rotating hosts – Paul Tabachneck, Heather Kropf and Joel Lindsey. The open stage intends to create a supportive environment for artists to network with their peers, test new music or haul out old favorites, and most importantly, extend their reach in the local scene. The open stage will also welcome talented touring artists.

AcoustiCafé is a volunteer promotional organization founded in the late nineties by Pittsburgh songwriters Mark Willson, Jerry Baum and Cherylann Hawk. During its heyday, it sponsored as many as five ongoing open stages, numerous concerts and other special events and served as a hub of information and support for local and touring musicians. For the last several years, AcoustiCafé has been on hiatus, but January’s open stage marks the first phase of the organization’s re-emergence. “There is a wealth of talent in the region," remarked Wilson. "We want to do all we can to support it.” AcoustiCafé’s plans include sponsoring music showcases to highlight the most popular open stage artists.

With free admission, drink specials, an early time slot, and the state-of-the-art sound and ambiance of Club Café, AcoustiCafé organizers expect this to become a popular open stage in the region, both for the artists and music lovers. For more information on AcoustiCafé, or the open stage, please visit www.acousticafe.org or www.clubcafelive.com.

I was invited to return to Anthony Frazier's Acoustic Hour Radio show in Indiana, PA. The show is now available on-line.

Heather Kropf joins the IonSound Project on Friday July 13th at 8:00 pm, in the Virgil King Atrium of the Union Project for an evening of contemporary classical, rock, and folk music. The IonSound Project is a Pittsburgh based sextet comprised of flutist Peggy Yoo, clarinetist Kathleen Costello, violinist Laura Motchalov, cellist Elisa Kohanski, pianist Rob Frankenberry, and percussionist Eliseo Rael. For this concert they will collaborate with popular Pittsburgh singer-songwriter Heather Kropf to add a new dimension to some of her original works. The group will also perform works by Michael Torke, Pittsburgh composer Patrick Burke, and new rock arrangements by Benjamin David Plesic. The Union Project is located at 801 N. Negley Ave. Tickets will be sold at the door and cost $10, $5 for students and seniors, and under 15 get in free. Reception to follow. For more information please visit: www.myspace.com/ionsound. The Union Project does not endorse the views of the organizations, groups, or individuals that rent space at the Union Project.

I'm taking a survey of which songs I should include on my next recording, which will be a piano/vocal solo project called Hestia.

If you've got some ideas for what songs you'd like to hear, now's your chance to tell me. The survey closes on Monday evening, April 16.

Take the survey.

Pittsburgh Independent Public Radio, WYEP, honors my album What Else is Love with a mention as a notable Pittsburgh release in their Year in Review publication.

They've been enormously supportive over the years and I've been introduced to lots of great artists through their station, so I'm glad to be part of the mix!

Heather performed "Downtown" at KDKA's Today Live show this morning to announce this weekend's Calliope Local Artist Showcase at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.

Tune into The Saturday Light Brigade on Saturdays at 10 am to hear exerpts from Heather Kropf's and Art From Chaos' "Songs for the Asking: A Simon and Garfunkel Tribute" as recorded 10/19 at
ModernFormations.

That's on 88.3 FM Pittsburgh, 1550 AM Pittsburgh, or 91.1 FM Grove City.

I've been thinking lately about the Greek goddess Hestia, ruler and keeper of the hearth. A friend of mine in college named me Hestia. I never heard of this goddess before but 10 years later she is emerging in my consciousness and naming my next recording project. I am paying attention.

After the big, shiny bustle of making "What Else is Love" I've been going inward. What is the essence of my songs? What is the least I can put on the page and still create art? What is my hearth?

People have been asking for the solo album. And now I want to make one.

I want to make the record I probably should have made first -- a very simple piano, vocal project with the occasional duet, the occasional stringed instrument. It'll be relatively brief, with songs from my first two records re-arranged, a few songs that have never made it to tape yet, 1-2 cover tunes, and perhaps 1-2 new ones. I think it'll be hard, but good.

Right now I'm exploring places & settings in which to create this album. The setting has to be focused and beautiful and close to nature. I'm hopeful that I can find a building in Chautauqua, NY, that has a good vibe and a good piano. Randy and I can take all our gear up there and stay at a friend's cabin for 2 weeks this fall and lay down some tracks and see what happens.

Until then, I'm working hard in Pittsburgh, falling in love with this town all over again, enjoying the basil that's growing in pots on my front porch, struggling to figure out how to have a voice of compassion & reason in this storm of political and religious zeal that's totally freaking me out these day.

I hope you are well. Don't forget that what you do every day matters. Your choices matter. Make them count.

Heather

p.s. If there are songs that you think I should be sure to try to put on this collection, join my mailing list. I'll be sending out a e-survey later this summer.

Daylight recieved a play on a podcast from The Unharshed Mellow. I think it was the Dogs Love Fish Cookies episode.