Shelby Earl feat. The Passenger String Quartet

• Shelby Earl, voice
• Billy Brush, piano

"Songs for Singing IV" will feature Seattle songwriter, Shelby Earl, performing a selection of original songs in a classic, "American Songbook" style, accompanied only by solo piano and string quartet. Featured instrumentalists Billy Brush (piano) and The Passenger String Quartet, will again help Earl reimagine arrangements of songs off her three studio albums (The Man Who Made Himself a Name, Swift Arrows, and Burn the Boats), as well as brand new, never-before-heard originals and selected covers. Years ago, Earl's friend (and Swift Arrows producer) Damien Jurado, said to her; "You know what I want? I want to hear your songs totally stripped down, performed with just your voice and a piano. Can you please play a show like that?" To which she answered "of course!" But the vision grew from there and Earl thought "we have to also add strings!" Thankfully, the amazingly talented Billy Brush and Passenger String Quartet leader, Andrew D.B. Joslyn, both immediately caught the vision, and have since helped to create an ever-evolving set of stunning new music.

About Passenger String Quartet

Experience the Passenger String Quartet (PSQ), a ​cutting-edge ensemble transforming the world of strings. ​We merge the timeless beauty of classical music with ​the vibrant pulse of contemporary and pop genres, ​partnering with renowned artists for electrifying ​collaborations.

With a history of international tours and major label ​recordings, we deliver a fresh and dynamic sound that ​captivates audiences worldwide.

About Shelby Earl, voice

Singer-songwriter Shelby Earl's first two albums earned the kind of raves any musician would kill for. Upon hearing her 2011 debut, Burn the Boats, NPR's Ann Powers called Earl her "new favorite songwriter," and she wasn't alone. Accolades followed from Rolling Stone to the Wall Street Journal and a million music sites in between that positioned her somewhere to the left of Neko Case, a few blocks from Sharon Van Etten, catercorner to Angel Olsen. She toured everywhere, playing with the likes of Loudon Wainwright, Rhett Miller, and Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie, who spoke for many people when he said Earl had "the most heartbreakingly beautiful voice in Seattle."

Two years later, she followed up with the equally powerful Swift Arrows (produced by Damien Jurado), and returned to the touring trenches, startling audiences around the world with songs that laid bare an inner landscape full of darkness and loss, as well as the defiant resolution not to be consumed by them. Both records are gorgeous, painstakingly crafted, and, not to put too fine a point on anything, full of heavy emotional weather. (Not for nothing did Powers observe that Earl's writes "for those of us who have been through a few things.")