Abigail Washburn never set out to be a songwriter or a recording artist. 

Five years ago when she found herself on stage in a smoke-filled Beijing club playing her banjo and singing old-time Appalachian mountain music in Chinese to a packed house, she was as surprised as anyone.

"A daring, definite talent, whose feel for the folk idiom results in moving material.  Soulful is the word," hailed the Wall Street Journal in 2005, during that same tour of China. "On stage, her voice resonated with the power of a seasoned performer and her poetic hill tunes sounded all the more evocative in Chinese."

As an "artist who best embodies the notion of Americana as a worldwide musical language" (The Tennessean), Abigail has created a new sound – a sound that challenges traditional notions of country and culture, embodied in the raw, transcendental music of the Sparrow Quartet.  The all-star collaboration featuring Bela Fleck, acclaimed cellist Ben Sollee and Grammy-nominated fiddler, Casey Driessen will unveil Abigail Washburn & the Sparrow Quartet in May 2008 (Nettwerk). 


"I had no intention of becoming a performer and yet under miraculous circumstances I was brought into the music industry fold," says Abigail. "If divine powers hadn't interfered I'd still be living in China working in some area of Sino-American comparative law."  


Coming to Chicago / River Forest -  September 13th at the  Dominican University