Ana's Mitchell brings folk stylings to THT

Author: Lea Calderon-Guthe

Though Ana's Mitchell '04 headlined the show at the Town Hall Theater on Friday, April 10, the audience came just as much to support the Willowell Foundation as they did to see the folk singer-songwriter. That's what she loved about the show.

"I really enjoy doing benefits because there's an excitement that is beyond the ego," Mitchell said. "It's not about me as much as we're all getting together to support this cause. I really like that."

"The cause" was the Willowell Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in 2000 in Monkton, Vt. that seeks to create connections between arts, education and the environment. Executive Director of the Willowell Foundation Matt Schlein elaborated on the foundation's mission.

"Willowell is really a grassroots way to create a sense of balance and a positive intersect between human communities and natural communities, and to give people a greater sense of who they are, what's their relationship to their culture and what's their relationship to the natural world," he said.

The benefit concert featured Mitchell as both a recent indie smash and a local favorite - Mitchell grew up in Middlebury and went to the College. Two opening acts set the community tone for the show even before Mitchell hit the stage. Jeff and Fiona Spencer, a father-daughter duo, played with Sam Bevitt, another local, before Alexandria Hall, stage name "toothache," took over.

Both Fiona and Hall attended the Walden Project, a nationally-acclaimed environmental education program based out of Vergennes High School. Students study mainly environmental sciences, literature and art, but plenty of subjects fit under the umbrella of "place-based education" that the project strives for. Walden Project students organized the benefit.

"This is high school students saying, 'We want to do something good, we want to do something positive. Willowell's helped us out, we want to help Willowell out,'" Schlein said.

While the kids of the Walden Project played the main role in organizing the benefit, another aspect of the Willowell Foundation received most of the proceeds. Schlein estimated the Foundation raised more than $2,000 at the concert, which will help support the community garden.

The money may have gone to the community garden, but the Walden Project students were not neglected for their ambition and creativity. Mitchell played a bevy of rousing acoustic melodies, many from her folk-opera, "Hadestown," and most from her newest album, "The Brightness," but she dedicated one song in particular to the students.

"[The Walden Project] is the kind of thing I wish I could have had access to when I was in high school myself," Mitchell said. "I played this cover of a song by a friend of mine, and I don't think I would have played that had it not been for the youth of the crowd and wanting to play the song for them. It's about an artist struggling with his own integrity as an artist in a world that can make you feel like a trained monkey sometimes. I wish I'd heard that song when I was 16."