HER CROOKED HEART TO PERFORM AT NEW YORK MILLS CULTURAL CENTER JANUARY 11TH

Join Twin Cities based band, Her Crooked Heart, led by singer/songwriter Rachel Ries, for an intimate evening of music at the New York Mills Cultural Center on Saturday, January 11 at 7:30 p.m.

The quartet blends classical and electric guitar; piano and vintage synths; cello, woodwinds and drum triggers. This merging of acoustic and synthetic sounds is all in service of the voice: four part vocal harmonies that shift from ethereal to an elemental wail, but always tell a story of transformation.

Ries is the recipient of a 2019 Minnesota State Arts Board Arts on Tour grant that along with support from the New York Mills Cultural Center brings this exciting new project and residency to the NY Mills community.

Rachel and the band will be engaging a wide range of New York Mills schools, organizations, and community members in workshops pop-up performances and other activities throughout the week of January 7th through January 11th including Mills Manor, The Wadena Alternative Learning Center, and New York Mills Area Public Schools. All activities are free and open to the public.

In May 2019 the band released their debut record, To Love To Leave To Live, to critical acclaim and tours throughout the UK and US. To bring these songs and this record to the stage, Ries has enlisted a powerful group of women; women who can, in their way, take on the feminine, humanist mantle of Her Crooked Heart and make it their own: Siri Undlin (Humbird), Adelyn Strei (Adro), Hilary James (We are the Willows, Bathtub Cig).

The culminating performance will take place on Saturday, January 11, 2020 at 7:30 PM at the Cultural Center in New York Mills. Tickets are $15 at the door or $12 advance ($2 member discount), or $5 for students. Community Choir members and students who work with Rachel during the week attend the concert FREE!

For tickets or to learn more, visit www.kulcher.org or call (218) 385-3339.

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage foundation.

More info about Rachel Ries and Her Crooked Heart:

With To Love To Leave To Live, Minneapolis-based Her Crooked Heart presents a debut record unique in form, made up of cyclical narratives and intertwining histories, each informing the next. The result is a transformative song cycle, led by a charismatic personality, wholly indifferent to expectations of genre and instrumentation. Rachel Ries, the writer, multi-instrumentalist and producer behind Her Crooked Heart, demonstrates immense vulnerability and multifaceted musical craftsmanship to deliver a personal and profound musical soliloquy on love, leaving and the life that follows after burning it all down. 

To bring these songs and this record to the stage, Ries has enlisted a powerful group of women; women who can, in their way, take on the feminine, humanist mantle of Her Crooked Heart and make it their own: Siri Undlin (Humbird), Adelyn Strei (Adro), Hilary James (We are the Willows, Bathtub Cig). The quartet blends classical and electric guitar; piano and vintage synths; cello, woodwinds and drum triggers. This merging of acoustic and synthetic sounds is all in service of the voice: four part vocal harmonies that shift from ethereal to an elemental wail, always telling a story of transformation.

In 2013, after two and a half years of marriage, Ries found herself touring a record around the world, accompanied by a stack of divorce papers in a pocket of her suitcase. She had left her marriage and a good man in New York City and leapt into the untethered unknown. What transpired was in turns euphoria and despondence; old lessons learned in new ways. The songs on To Love To Leave To Live are a compassionate and at times wry catalogue of those tumultuous years, unflinchingly captured in the studio with co-producer Shane Leonard. Several collaborators, some of whom Ries met while touring with Anaïs Mitchell, helped create the vast and varied soundscape: Brian Joseph (Sufjan Stevens, Paul Simon), Rob Moose (yMusic, Alabama Shakes), Mike Lewis (Bon Iver), Alec Spiegelman (Cuddle Magic), Pat Keen, John DeHaven, Ben Lester and Rachel’s own siblings.

Rachel Ries [aka Her Crooked Heart] has a sensibility as familiar and comforting as it is surprising. At one turn, she’s got the vocal prowess of Tori Amos; at another, the complexity of a Radiohead tune. TO LOVE TO LEAVE TO LIVE is a record I’ve not stopped playing since I first heard it, and one I can anticipate revisiting for many years to come.

– Amy Reitnouer, Executive Director, The Bluegrass Situation

Setting her apart from many of her peers are the adventurous and compelling instrumental arrangements of her sweetly poetic material. 

– 8/10, Exclaim!

“It’s rare to find an artist willing to explore boundaries like this – she makes a delicately raw sound and is unafraid in her delivery… This album goes everywhere, up and down the musical scales and all around the human psyche – A very unique and outstanding listen… sounds as if every key of the piano is being explored – combining elements of David Bowie, Florence and the machine, and maybe even a touch of Peter Gabriel…”

– (5 Stars), Maverick Magazine

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More info about the Cultural Center:

The Cultural Center in New York Mills is a rural hub for creativity, community vitality, and lifelong learning in the arts. We offer visitors intimate opportunities to encounter art and artists in our 80-seat concert listening room, two galleries in a historic building, a gift store featuring local artists, an artist residency program, a sculpture park, and a variety of opportunities to learn, grow, and thrive. Since our incorporation in 1990, we have been passionate about connecting people to artists and rich cultural experiences in rural Minnesota, celebrating the local and being a window to the world.