Biography
http://ncam.wgbh.org/webaccess/symbolwinner.html
Biography
ANN ZIMMERMAN
Kansas Singer and Songwriter
Ann Zimmerman sings the prairie into universal language. Her music celebrates the joy, sorrow, grandeur and silliness of life, especially life on the windy plains. She backs her rich 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, Alaska-and turned each audience into her backup choir. Blending old and new traditions with her own award-winning songs, Ann's concerts tell stories and paint portraits, brilliantly-colored and unexpected, enhanced by an irresistible stage presence. She has released three independent recordings of her music.
Ann appears annually at the world-renowned Land Institute in central Kansas, and has entertained at festivals, farmers markets, fancy theaters, and smoky dives-singing around a hundred dates each year. The "People's Choice" winner in the 2008 Wildflower! Festival song contest near Dallas, she is a long-standing member of the juried "Kansas Arts on Tour" and Mid-America Arts Alliance rosters and was nominated for a "grass-roots grammy" in the Just Plain Folks national song contest. Ann has shared stages and harmonies with folk musician John McCutcheon; songwriter Steve Gillette; Celtic singer Connie Dover; and opened for author Wendell Berry. Sample her music at www.annzimmerman.com/records.html. Ann has been reviewed in the national Singer Magazine, featured on public television and interviewed on a California podcast.
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, and president of a Kansas environmental organization. Between musical performances, she is a lawyer with her degree from Harvard Law School and a focus on mediation of legal conflicts. She lives near Salina on a horse-boarding farm and divides her time between legal mediation and music.