One Meat Ball
Christine Lavin seems to add more skills, interests, and fascinating friends to her resume with each breath she takes. Singer, songwriter, performer, conceptualist, humorist, storyteller, journalist, author, teacher, activist, disc jockey, record producer, baton twirler, knitter, calendar model . . . and all of these talents glow with her openhearted and inclusive spiritIn the thirty years since moving from upstate New York to New York City, Christine has released seventeen solo albums (the last three on Appleseed Recordings), compiled eight previous "themed" song compilations, frequently toured the US, Canada and overseas, founded the Four Bitchin’ Babes group of funny female folksingers (with which she recorded and performed from 1990 to 1997), and has won numerous awards and accolades for her creativity and wit.Among the many honors her work has garnered are two New York Music Awards, seven ASCAP performer awards, the Kate Wolf Memorial Award and the 2001 Backstage Bistro Award for Outstanding New York Singer/ Songwriter of the Year. In 1998, she was the wonderfully surprised subject of "Big League Babe," a 2-CD tribute containing versions of her songs secretly recorded by dozens of her fellow singer-songwriters.Although Christine has written songs of great poignancy, it is her riotously clear-eyed commentaries on personal and societal foibles that have established her musical niche. "Sensitive New Age Guys," "What Was I Thinking," and other Lavin originals have been featured in Off-Broadway musicals.Christine’s live performances have become multi-faceted family-fun extravaganzas over the years. Her concerts are often preceded by a knitting circle, with Chris and like-minded fans trading tips and stitches. And in the shows themselves, Chris literally shines, strapping on a miner’s helmet to search for each city’s perfect man in the audience and climaxing her sets with an incongruously impressive display of glowing baton-twirling. Along with the visuals, Chris delights her fans with her acute original songs, comic monologues, quizzes, contests, and the frequent use of a Boomerang sampling device that multiplies and delays her voice into harmonies and swirling rounds. Christine has been featured on ABC-TV’s "Good Morning America," NBC-TV’s "The Today Show," and, on the radio, on NPR, "CBS Sunday Morning" and CNN. Chris also periodically presents a "Slipped Disks" folk music show on "Channel 15, The Village" on XM Satellite Radio.In other creative areas, Christine’s prose career includes a 2003 collaboration with illustrator Betsy Franco Feeney on the children’s book "The Amoeba Hop" (Puddle Jump Press), based on Christine’s song of the same title, which won the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual Science Book & Film’s "Best Books for Children" Award and led to a guest performance for the International Society of Protozoologists. Her essays and articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Delta Sky Magazine, Inside Arts, Performing Songwriter and other periodicals.