Songwriter/ethnomusicologist Emily Pinkerton combines folk, popular and chamber music in her original work. She is a founding member of The Early Mays, a band that has topped the National Folk-DJ charts and has been featured twice on NPR’s Mountain Stage.
The Mays released “Prettiest Blue” in July 2022, a project called “restoratively vintage” with “a warmth that is often missed in raucous contemporary releases” (For Folk’s Sake). This year Emily is setting down her banjo and guitar to explore that same vintage energy and warmth in a new set of songs for piano.
She is also writing a new song cycle, “Ephemera Ballads,” for artist-led and award-winning fivebyfive, based in Rochester, NY. The chamber piece is inspired by 18th and 19th broadside folk poetry, drawing connections between past and present that relate to bodily autonomy, gender identity and reproductive rights.
PROJECTS
LoOKING For Violeta
An original score for dramatic work about Chilean artists Violeta and Nicanor Parra with Quantum Theatre
Rounder Songs
An Appalachian Song Cycle by Emily Pinkerton & Patrick Burke, Now Available on New Amsterdam Records