Biography
Biography
ANN ZIMMERMAN
Kansas Singer and Songwriter
She sings the prairie into universal language. Her music celebrates life on the windy plains, in all its joy, sorrow, grandeur and silliness. She accompanies her wonderful voice with piano, guitar and the audience itself. Ann has taken her Kansas style across the Great Plains and beyond—to New York, Seattle, Boston, Texas and Alaska and turned each audience into her backup choir. Blending old and new folksongs, cabaret numbers, and her own award-winning creations, Ann’s concerts tell stories and paint portraits, brilliantly-colored and unexpected, highlighted with an irresistible stage presence. She has released three independent recordings of her music.
Recently nominated for a “grass-roots grammy” in the Just Plain Folks national song contest, Ann is a long-standing member of the juried “Kansas Arts on Tour” and Mid-America Arts Alliance programs. She appears annually at the world-renowned Land Institute in central Kansas, was selected to perform for the dedication of the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve and has entertained at festivals, farmers markets, fancy theaters, and smoky dives—singing more than one hundred dates each year. She has shared stages and harmonies with folk musician John McCutcheon; songwriter Steve Gillette; Celtic singer Connie Dover; and has opened for author Wendell Berry. Her recordings—“Blue Wild Indigo,” "Canned Goods" and "Love & Weather"—are available on CD and cassette and by download. Sample her music at www.annzimmerman.com . Ann has been reviewed in the national Singer Magazine, featured on Kansas Public Television and interviewed on a California podcast and Northern Ireland radio.
Ann grew up in Salina, Kansas, singing folksongs with her family to the strums of her mother's autoharp. She has been an elementary teacher, a bank clerk, a plumbing catalog editor, an agricultural intern, a student and graduate of Harvard Law School, president of a Kansas environmental organization, and a long-time legal aid lawyer. She now lives near Salina on a horse-boarding farm and divides her time between legal mediation and music.