Emily Pinkerton

One of the best PittArts programs we've had yet. - Kathryn Heidemann

One of the best PittArts programs we've had yet. - Kathryn Heidemann

An eminent performer, she represents Chilean music with precision and respect. - Micaela Navarrete

When you hear local songwriter and ethnomusicologist Emily Pinkerton sing, a sense of nostalgia invades you. As a matter of fact, The Santiago Times (Chile) called her voice “the epitome of loneliness and a portal for the familiarity that only home can bring.”

Lyrical and hypnotic, Emily’s performances are a unique combination of Latin American music and the traditional sounds of American Old-Time. Born in the Midwest, she studied in Chile where she first heard Violeta Parra, a major influence in all of her music. She sings fluently in Spanish for many of her songs, then picks up her banjo and tells American tales such as John Lover is Gone.

You’ll find Emily on stage with an array of instruments in her arsenal. She plays guitar, banjo and violin expertly, but her talent with the guitarron (a traditional 25-stringed Chilean guitar) has set her apart from her folk music counterparts. Her musical dexterity and haunting compositions have gained her international acclaim, including recognition by Pittsburgh City Paper, Sing Out!, The Space, The Santiago Times (Chili) and The New Haven Advocate.

Emily has performed across North and South America at venues such as SXSW, Makor, the Cactus Café and La Casa en el Aire. On fiddle, banjo and guitar, she has shared the stage with artists such as Divahn, Glen Velez, Stacy Phillips, and the Chieftains. While she often performs solo shows, you may be lucky enough to hear her play a set with her husband and composer Patrick Burke (guitar/keyboards) and double bassist Trish Imbrogno.

For more information about Emily Pinkerton, check out her website, www.emilypinkerton.com. Don’t forget to make her your friend on Myspace, www.myspace.com/ejpinkerton.
- Nightwire, Pittsburgh, PA

When you hear local songwriter and ethnomusicologist Emily Pinkerton sing, a sense of nostalgia invades you. As a matter of fact, The Santiago Times (Chile) called her voice “the epitome of loneliness and a portal for the familiarity that only home can bring.”

Lyrical and hypnotic, Emily’s performances are a unique combination of Latin American music and the traditional sounds of American Old-Time. Born in the Midwest, she studied in Chile where she first heard Violeta Parra, a major influence in all of her music. She sings fluently in Spanish for many of her songs, then picks up her banjo and tells American tales such as John Lover is Gone.

You’ll find Emily on stage with an array of instruments in her arsenal. She plays guitar, banjo and violin expertly, but her talent with the guitarron (a traditional 25-stringed Chilean guitar) has set her apart from her folk music counterparts. Her musical dexterity and haunting compositions have gained her international acclaim, including recognition by Pittsburgh City Paper, Sing Out!, The Space, The Santiago Times (Chili) and The New Haven Advocate.

Emily has performed across North and South America at venues such as SXSW, Makor, the Cactus Café and La Casa en el Aire. On fiddle, banjo and guitar, she has shared the stage with artists such as Divahn, Glen Velez, Stacy Phillips, and the Chieftains. While she often performs solo shows, you may be lucky enough to hear her play a set with her husband and composer Patrick Burke (guitar/keyboards) and double bassist Trish Imbrogno.

For more information about Emily Pinkerton, check out her website, www.emilypinkerton.com. Don’t forget to make her your friend on Myspace, www.myspace.com/ejpinkerton.
- Nightwire, Pittsburgh, PA

While she was an exchange student in Chile 10 years ago, Emily Pinkerton was introduced to the music of Violeta Parra. She'd heard nothing like it before, and a decade later, Parra's sound has become intrinsic to the Avalon resident's music.
"Over the past 10 years, it's started to become what I normally do," says Pinkerton, who performs the music of Parra Saturday with Chilean musician Marcia Moreno at the Altar Bar, in the Strip District. "When I was new to it, it was something rhythmically completely different. When I first heard these dance and song rhythms she played, you couldn't feel them in the same way you feel other things you've heard so much."

Parra (1917-67), is considered the inspiration for la nueva cancion, the music that would change perceptions of what folk music was in Chile. Prior to Parra, folk music was mostly four-part harmonies, with stereotypical pastoral images dominating.

"She, having grown up in the country, sort of wiped out that aesthetic," Pinkerton says. "She had a more pared-down approach; simple, more straightforward, raw in a way. It wasn't just about smiling and saying how beautiful is the Chilean countryside, but this is what it's like for people, here are some of the social problems. Rural music doesn't sound like this, it's not fine, four-part harmonies. It is raw and does express these deep, deep emotions."

Whereas folk music, especially in America, relies on flat-picking, Parra's use of the acoustic guitar was more percussive, relying on interlocking rhythms. Her time signatures also were different, and Pinkerton says she was attracted to the overall aesthetic of Parra's work, which utilized both guitar and stringed instruments of indigenous and European origin in small ensembles.
"A few years back in high school I'd been listening to Joan Baez and Bob Dylan," Pinkerton says, "who had this pared-down sound and this emphasis on how you delivered the text and the depth of the poetry you wrote. That's what I heard in it."

At the time of her death by suicide in 1967, Parra was mostly unknown in North America. In 1973, Joan Baez recorded a version of Parra's "Gracias a la vida" (translated as "Thanks to life"), one of Parra's most popular songs, and she gained some semblance of fame in folk circles.

In South America, however, Parra and her family -- which includes poets, writers and musicians -- are, according to Pinkerton, akin to Woody Guthrie and his brood. Even though her daughter, Isabel Parra, is a musician, Violeta Parra's music is more than just a family tradition.

"I would just say that Violeta has had so much influence on so many people in such a wide range of musical styles," Pinkerton says. "So many people cite her as an influence, that I think the torch is really spread out. So many people are bearing it right now, and her daughter is one of them and at the forefront. ... But she so permeates Chilean culture that she's everywhere."

- Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

While she was an exchange student in Chile 10 years ago, Emily Pinkerton was introduced to the music of Violeta Parra. She'd heard nothing like it before, and a decade later, Parra's sound has become intrinsic to the Avalon resident's music.
"Over the past 10 years, it's started to become what I normally do," says Pinkerton, who performs the music of Parra Saturday with Chilean musician Marcia Moreno at the Altar Bar, in the Strip District. "When I was new to it, it was something rhythmically completely different. When I first heard these dance and song rhythms she played, you couldn't feel them in the same way you feel other things you've heard so much."

Parra (1917-67), is considered the inspiration for la nueva cancion, the music that would change perceptions of what folk music was in Chile. Prior to Parra, folk music was mostly four-part harmonies, with stereotypical pastoral images dominating.

"She, having grown up in the country, sort of wiped out that aesthetic," Pinkerton says. "She had a more pared-down approach; simple, more straightforward, raw in a way. It wasn't just about smiling and saying how beautiful is the Chilean countryside, but this is what it's like for people, here are some of the social problems. Rural music doesn't sound like this, it's not fine, four-part harmonies. It is raw and does express these deep, deep emotions."

Whereas folk music, especially in America, relies on flat-picking, Parra's use of the acoustic guitar was more percussive, relying on interlocking rhythms. Her time signatures also were different, and Pinkerton says she was attracted to the overall aesthetic of Parra's work, which utilized both guitar and stringed instruments of indigenous and European origin in small ensembles.
"A few years back in high school I'd been listening to Joan Baez and Bob Dylan," Pinkerton says, "who had this pared-down sound and this emphasis on how you delivered the text and the depth of the poetry you wrote. That's what I heard in it."

At the time of her death by suicide in 1967, Parra was mostly unknown in North America. In 1973, Joan Baez recorded a version of Parra's "Gracias a la vida" (translated as "Thanks to life"), one of Parra's most popular songs, and she gained some semblance of fame in folk circles.

In South America, however, Parra and her family -- which includes poets, writers and musicians -- are, according to Pinkerton, akin to Woody Guthrie and his brood. Even though her daughter, Isabel Parra, is a musician, Violeta Parra's music is more than just a family tradition.

"I would just say that Violeta has had so much influence on so many people in such a wide range of musical styles," Pinkerton says. "So many people cite her as an influence, that I think the torch is really spread out. So many people are bearing it right now, and her daughter is one of them and at the forefront. ... But she so permeates Chilean culture that she's everywhere."

- Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Songwriter, performer, multi-instrumentalist and ethnomusicologist Emily Pinkerton is looking forward to more than just returning to her old stomping grounds for her Saturday performance at Valparaiso's Front Porch Music.

"I'm hoping to see some old friends, a reunion of people from VHS's drama department," she said. "That should also be a fun thing to do when I come up there."

A 1994 graduate of Valparaiso High School, Pinkerton first tried her luck as a youngster at piano, violin and voice and picked up the guitar when she was in high school.

She made her debut on the Front Porch stage while still at Valparaiso High School as one-third of the acoustic outfit Trillium. She last graced the stage there, by her estimation, about two or three years ago during one of the venue's Thursday open mic nights.

Early on, Pinkerton developed a passion for American folk music, which led her down the path to everything from South American folk music to traditional, old time music.

After completing her studies at Valparaiso High School, she made her way to Butler University in Indianapolis, where she studied music, and furthered her education at the University of Texas, where she received her Master's degree.

"To me, learning about music I (first) didn't know about was fascinating," she said. "It's a constant process of expanding your ears. There's a whole other realm (of music) that when you listen to it (for the first time) you don't know that it's there. And then you start hearing the old time fiddling and different ways of playing guitar in a folk song."

Pinkerton juggles her studies, which have taken her throughout the globe, with recording and performing, which has found her playing to industry types at the prestigious South By Southwest Music Conference and sharing stages with artists ranging from Celtic legends the Chieftains to bluegrass multi-instrumentalist Stacy Phillips.

In 2004, Pinkerton released her first recorded effort, a self-titled EP.

Currently residing in Pittsburgh after spending a year in Chile furthering her ethnomusicology research, she is working on what will be her follow-up to her EP.

She hopes to have the set, her first full-length effort, available come fall.

"It's going to be longer, but I'm still going to try and keep it similar to the other songs that are on the EP," she said. "I'm doing live tracks that I keep to (an accompaniment of) two to three instruments."


- Nortwest Indiana Times

Songwriter, performer, multi-instrumentalist and ethnomusicologist Emily Pinkerton is looking forward to more than just returning to her old stomping grounds for her Saturday performance at Valparaiso's Front Porch Music.

"I'm hoping to see some old friends, a reunion of people from VHS's drama department," she said. "That should also be a fun thing to do when I come up there."

A 1994 graduate of Valparaiso High School, Pinkerton first tried her luck as a youngster at piano, violin and voice and picked up the guitar when she was in high school.

She made her debut on the Front Porch stage while still at Valparaiso High School as one-third of the acoustic outfit Trillium. She last graced the stage there, by her estimation, about two or three years ago during one of the venue's Thursday open mic nights.

Early on, Pinkerton developed a passion for American folk music, which led her down the path to everything from South American folk music to traditional, old time music.

After completing her studies at Valparaiso High School, she made her way to Butler University in Indianapolis, where she studied music, and furthered her education at the University of Texas, where she received her Master's degree.

"To me, learning about music I (first) didn't know about was fascinating," she said. "It's a constant process of expanding your ears. There's a whole other realm (of music) that when you listen to it (for the first time) you don't know that it's there. And then you start hearing the old time fiddling and different ways of playing guitar in a folk song."

Pinkerton juggles her studies, which have taken her throughout the globe, with recording and performing, which has found her playing to industry types at the prestigious South By Southwest Music Conference and sharing stages with artists ranging from Celtic legends the Chieftains to bluegrass multi-instrumentalist Stacy Phillips.

In 2004, Pinkerton released her first recorded effort, a self-titled EP.

Currently residing in Pittsburgh after spending a year in Chile furthering her ethnomusicology research, she is working on what will be her follow-up to her EP.

She hopes to have the set, her first full-length effort, available come fall.

"It's going to be longer, but I'm still going to try and keep it similar to the other songs that are on the EP," she said. "I'm doing live tracks that I keep to (an accompaniment of) two to three instruments."


- Nortwest Indiana Times

“But as impressive as Pinkerton's musical dexterity is--she plays guitar, banjo and violin expertly--it pales next to her vocal tone...Emotions waver on Pinkerton's vibrations. At times, her voice is the epitome of loneliness, and at others, a portal for the familiarity that only home can bring. She sings about love and war, rejection and homecoming, changing the atmosphere in the room with each breath." - The Santiago Times (Santiago, Chile)

The title of "singer-songwriter" doesn't sit well with Emily Pinkerton, and it's easy to understand why. Rather than the near-pathological urge for public self-expression that seems to drive many singer-songwriters, Pinkerton's journey through several musical worlds -- and fiddle, banjo, guitar and Latin American instruments -- seems driven more by curiosity and creative inquiry.

Pinkerton has called Pittsburgh home since 2005; she currently teaches undergrad Latin American and world-music courses as an adjunct at Pitt, and directs an "eclectic" music ensemble at the Shadyside Unitarian Church. In Pittsburgh, she found a supportive home -- and for a time, employment -- through the Calliope folk-music society, and a chance to pursue her solo career.

"It's been a place where I've been able to have the time, resources and support from people and organizations to do my album, to make my music," Pinkerton says.

Yet her musical roots lie worlds apart: her hometown of Valparaiso, Indiana, where she grew up and studied classical and old-time music, and Valparaíso, Chile, where she's immersed herself in Latin American music. Sharing a name, the two towns had exchange programs bringing students back and forth, Pinkerton says, and with them, culture. That sparked Pinkerton's interest in Latin America, and while working around a degree in voice from the University of Texas, she eventually found ways -- and funding -- to "apprentice myself to Chilean musicians."

During her second year-long visit to Chile, in 2004, she studied canto a lo poeta, "a rural tradition, although people are doing it more and more in the cities too," she says, similar to the urban folk revival in the United States. "It's this thing with a long history, and the point of it being to relay both secular and sacred stories through either memorized or improvised poetry."

She also picked up the guitarrón, a Chilean guitar-type instrument, and the cajón, a drum used in flamenco. "It's a box made out of wood, with a top that's loose that kinda rattles," she says. Those two instruments feature prominently on Valparaíso, her full length album being released this week, which fuses musical flavors from both Valparaisos into Pinkerton's original songs in both English and Spanish.

"There's a couple of songs where I explicitly [said], 'Let's see what happens if I fuse this traditional Chilean song with banjo,'" says Pinkerton, "but then several of the songs are real straight-up old-time, or countryish, songwriterish." Indeed, apart from Pinkerton's high, clear voice, "Bluebird" sounds like something from The Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo, as does "Open Bottle," with its fiddle and banjo in counterpoint, and the lines "so drown your heart and drain your soul / if your throat's not dry, it overflows."

Pinkerton's transcontinental style comes across most on "El Cerro" and "Kingdom Down," two songs "overlapping in ways, though you don't necessarily hear it," she says. While sung in Spanish and featuring the cajón drum, the gorgeous "El Cerro" ("The Hill") was inspired by Pittsburgh's scenery, especially the lonely stairs that climb its hills. "It's one that talks about a landscape as if it's an emotion," she says, "a sense of needing to get up to the hill, to get away, and sensing whether its safe to come back down or not."

The album-closer "Kingdom Down," on the other hand, is sung in English and has an earthy Americana flavor, yet it relates to her experience of sleeping through earthquakes in Chile. "You sometimes sleep through things in life too," she muses. "You don't realize how long the ground has been shaking."

Three songs on the album are Chilean canto a lo poeta, rearranged by Pinkerton, who also performs nearly all of the instruments, and recorded it at her home studio. Her husband Patrick Burke plays guitar and sings backup on a couple of songs, and Trish Imbrogno plays upright bass.

But to play live, she's been assembling a group of musicians -- "I have a cajón player lined up, and a couple of bass players I gig with," she says. For her CD release show on Sat., Sept. 13, at Lawrenceville's Your Inner Vagabond Coffeehouse and World Lounge, she'll perform both solo and with a full band. Afro-beat project Machete will play before and after, "In case people want to dance, or just hang out and celebrate for a while," she says.

Although Pinkerton has every reason to celebrate Valparaíso, she won't be kicking back for long: In November, she heads to Chile to play a couple of concerts, along with scattered U.S. dates. And then there's the informal Chilean-music jams right here in Pittsburgh. "The Chilean community here is not huge, but man, it's been great!" Pinkerton says. "We've formed a music group in the past couple years -- about once a week I hang out and play Chilean music."



Emily Pinkerton CD Release with Machete. 8 p.m. Sat., Sept. 13. Your Inner Vagabond Coffeehouse and World Lounge, 4130 Butler St., Lawrence - Pittsburgh City Paper

“Affecting and poignant—a different kind of high lonesome…” - Sing Out!

Emily Pinkerton studied ethnomusicology at the University of Texas and spent time living in Chile to absorb the native folk traditions.

That might be great background for a musician, but it would be of little value if Pinkerton didn't also bring a talent for flatpicking on guitar and banjo, a gift for melody and a lovely voice reminiscent of Joan Baez.

It all comes to the surface on "Valparaiso," a debut album of mostly original folk songs sung in English and Spanish. It's so named because she originally stems from Valparaiso, Ind., and her musical explorations took her Valparaiso, Chile.

Pinkerton, a part of the Pittsburgh music scene since the fall of 2005, became enamored with the classic folk of Baez, Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel while she was in high school. But she doesn't consider herself a folk musician tied to any one era.

"Without a doubt I admire Dylan and Baez, and they have been largely influential in my musical life, especially Dylan," she says. "I'm not trying to harken back to past eras of folk music, however, or define myself in relation to standards of musical or political purity. My background is in acoustic styles and instruments, and I feel like I'm doing what I do best on this album. The result is something where traditional sounds are at the forefront, but they are shaded by influences that range from old-time banjo to artists like Bjork."

Pinkerton says her guitar influences range from Dylan and Maybelle Carter to such Latin players as Silvio Rodriguez and Violeta Parra.

"I often play solo, and when I create guitar parts, I try to emulate multi-layered rhythms of South American genres -- like Chilean cueca or Venezuelan joropo -- in a way that is sparse, yet rhythmically intricate."

She points to a song like "Ten Years" as a convergence of her various influences.

"I'm singing for an old friend that I lost a couple years back. The melody, cadence and rhythm draw from a mournful Chilean song style called 'canto a lo divino,' yet the overall sound remains somehow very North American."

It's part of an approach on "Valparaiso" to move away from simply re-creating the music she loves.

"This album has been about loosening up that process: stretching genres, rhythms and forms; seeing what happens when I fuse Etta Baker's finger-picking patterns with rural Chilean guitar, or rework a traditional South American song on clawhammer banjo. In this sense, I do feel like I'm shaping a sound that is Latin American, yet in the mingling of styles, becomes my own."


- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Emily Pinkerton grew up in Valparaiso, Ind. Later, she would spend time in Valparaiso, Chile.

No wonder her first full-length release is called "Valparaiso."

"Both in the poetry and the music, there's little of both worlds," she says of the album, which she will debut Saturday at Your Inner Vagabond in Lawrenceville.

Pinkerton discovered the music of Chile while an exchange student when she was 19. At first, it took her awhile to get a sense of the music that is indigenous to the South American nation.

"They have some dance rhythms, some song rhythms, that are very different," she says. "It took a lot of listening to get inside it. I had to study it before I could sing it."

The most notable Chilean music is nuevo cancion, as performed by Violetta Parra and Victor Jara, folksingers and political activists. Joan Baez has performed songs by Parra, and Arlo Guthrie memorialized Jara in the song "Victor Jara."

But Pinkerton says that the styles of Chilean music differ based on what part of the slender country one visits. Notably there are high-paced dance rhythms that interlock in interesting ways, with the parts pushing and pulling against one another.

Her emphasis, however, is the Chilean music from the central region of the country that is "very free, over a cyclical rhythmic base on guitar or the guitarron, over chant-like melodies. It's very beautiful."

Pinkerton's idea for "Valparaiso" is ... a juxtaposition of North and South America. The trick is to blend without losing the flavor of either.

"Sometimes, sonically, it will sound totally North American, or totally South American," she says. "But with poetry and the way it is used in both places, or something about the phrasing, it might sound like something else. Instead of keeping them separate, it's bringing them together, and also seeing how I could overlap and play with that."

Most of all, it's music that actively engages the listener. There's an inherent sense of joy, of happiness, that colors a sound that sometimes is in direct contrast to the lyrical content.

"I try to have the liveliness of the rhythm draw you in," Pinkerton says. "But also there's a mournful quality to it. Those two things play off each other."

- Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

For a Pittsburgh, Penn.-based adjunct music instructor raised in Valparaiso, Ind., the connections between her Midwest hometown and the city of Valparaíso, Chile, run deep. In college, an exchange program sent Emily Pinkerton to Chile for a year, introducing her to traditional Latin American songwriting styles and instruments, reshaping her musical ear.

Pinkerton's eventual "decade of immersion" into the Chilean culture opened her to opportunities to study with musical masters such as Chosto Ulloa and Santos Rubio, among others. "When I started studying with my principal guitarrón teacher, Alfonso Rubio, he became very interested in the banjo," she says. "I taught him clawhammer style, and his first tunes were his favorite Chilean and Spanish ballads." Although she remembers "feeling lost at first," conducting her graduate research work on the canto a lo poeta singing style with a 25-string Chilean guitarrón turned Pinkerton's timidity to enthusiasm. In fall 2008, she released her first full-length album, Valparaiso, on Green Jeans Records, in tribute to her two Valpo homes.

"Between eight years of graduate school and three years of living in Chile, Latin American music has become the center of my artistic world," Pinkerton says. "At first, in Chile and in the States, I tried to learn traditional music in a disciplined way - really focusing on recreating the sounds I heard. Making Valparaíso was about letting go of that in a way that moved beyond just having my own style or timbre within a certain genre."

Her album contains a collection of 12 songs sung in English or Spanish, with Pinkerton leading on vocals, guitar, banjo, fiddle, Chilean guitarrón, charango and cajón.
"Recording Valparaíso, I created the arrangements long after the core guitar or banjo part was written," she says. "This process is shifting a bit now that I have a steady trio in Pittsburgh with bassist Layo Puentes and cajón player Lucas Savage." Puentes and Savage, along with Pinkerton's guitarist husband, Patrick Burke, performed on the album. "Writing with my husband is fun and challenging," she says, "because it pushes me beyond my usual harmonic and lyrical boundaries. He's a composer who writes a lot of rock-influenced chamber music, and I've steeped myself in folk and traditional sounds."

Her cohorts are able to successfully balance the best of two cultures and songwriting styles. "Sometimes a song descends in one fell swoop [like 'Kingdom Down' or 'El Cerro']," Pinkerton says, "and others are built layer by layer over a few months. With a song like 'La flor de la verbena,' for example, I'm exploring the sounds of a cueca [Chilean national folk dance], with my Midwestern musical ear, rather than trying to replicate a traditional Chilean sound."

Growing up in Indiana gave Pinkerton opportunities that "brought the world to her front door," in her eyes. She became heavily involved in the music and drama clubs at Valparaiso High School, playing piano, violin and guitar as one-third of the acoustic trio Trillium. She also befriended exchange students from Chile and Uruguay, who taught her the music of Nueva Canción (literally "new song," a progressive movement in Central America that combined traditional music and rock) and the songs of Chilean poet and songwriter Victor Jara before she knew much about South American history. She later studied musical voice and foreign language at Butler University in Indianapolis, and eventually earned a doctorate in ethnomusicology from the University of Texas. "When I think about all this, it doesn't seem unusual at all to have taken the paths that I have chosen," she says.

Pinkerton's interest in 1960s folk music by such artists as Judy Collins, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez shines through in her singing and guitar picking styles, so much so that her voice has often been compared to an early Baez. However, Pinkerton says that Andean musician Violeta Parra has been her greatest influence.
"I heard her potent voice from a small boom box shortly after I first arrived in Chile in 1996, and the power of that first listen never left me," she says. "It was just her, a charango and a deep drum, nothing else, and I didn't understand a word of her lyrics. By the time I left Chile a year later, I'd internalized every single word and note of that album, Las últimas composiciones de Violeta Parra. Once I came to understand her words, they carried the same impact as her voice. They strike hard with a minimum of embellishment, but leave a wake of subtle, lasting and sometimes conflicting sentiments. A perfect example is her most well known song, 'Gracias a la vida,' [a song often covered by Baez], which is a tremendous ode to the human condition. Beneath the sincere thanks she expresses for her sight, her ears, her voice and her listeners, she tucks away a persistent undertone of irony and sadness, reflecting many of the personal losses she had suffered shortly before writing the song."
Similarly - NUVO, Indianapolis, IN

It's hard not to be enchanted with Emily Pinkerton's music when it takes you from the North American Midwest to the South American Andes. The ubiquitous guitar makes it accessible, but the Latin rhythms and language turn it into an exotic, luscious thing. Pinkerton went from Valparaiso, Indiana to Valparaiso, Chile as an exchange student, taking with her a love of old-time fiddle and banjo. She became a critically acclaimed performer, singing both American old-time music and tunes in the Andean singer-songwriter style of Violetta Parra. On her new CD Valparaiso, Pinkerton's singing (in both English and Spanish) straddles the cultures but could "pass" in either one: It's simple and clean, and lets the melody shine through. - Michael Gill - The Cleveland Scene