Anne Hills

Anne Hills stands out among today’s folk performers thanks to her remarkable soprano quality. Yet her skill at selecting lasting material together with her gift for crafting sincere original songs has placed her among the field’s most accomplished figures. Beyond her own distinctive solo releases, she has issued duet recordings with Tom Paxton, Cindy Mangsen, and Chicago-based songwriter Michael Smith, and has joined Mangsen and Priscilla Herdman on trio projects. A longtime participant in the Chicago folk community of the 1980s, she appeared in a celebrated trio with folksingers Paxton and Bob Gibson. Her voice has also been heard on albums by Smith, Jim Post, Livingston Taylor, Artie Traum, and Si Kahn.

Born in India as the third daughter of American missionaries, Hills grew up in Michigan. While studying at the Interlochen Arts Academy she performed as featured soloist with the school’s big band, whose members included Dave Brubeck’s son Chris and percussionist Peter Erskine, later of Weather Report. After moving to Chicago in 1976, she helped establish Hogeye Music, a folklore center and recording label. The label issued her first three recordings: The Panic Is On, made with Jan Burda in 1982; Don’t Explain in 1984; and the multi-artist Christmas collection On This Day Earth Shall Sing, also from 1984. Flying Fish later absorbed Hogeye’s catalog and its roster of performers, among them Paxton, Mangsen, Gibson, and Andrew Calhoun.

Produced by Artie Traum and Scott Petito, her second solo album, Woman of a Calm Heart from 1988, emphasized her interpretive strength through intimate readings of songs by Ilene Weiss, Gregory Simon, Eliza Gilkyson, Jack Hardy, Kris Kristofferson, and David Roth. On her third solo release, October Child in 1993, produced by Erskine, Hills centered the material of Michael Smith. She stepped forward as a songwriter on her fourth solo album, Angle of the Light in 1995, which contained eight original pieces plus collaborations with Smith (“Forget-Me-Not”) and harp player Jay Ansill (“Lover’s Knot”).

Hills first met Cindy Mangsen after hearing her on the Chicago radio program Midnight Special in 1977. Their earliest joint appearance took place in 1988 when Priscilla Herdman joined them at the Old Songs Festival. The trio issued its debut album Voices in 1990. Their second trio recording, Voices of Winter, appeared in 1997, and the group completed its third album, At the Turning of the Year, in 2000. As a duo Hills and Mangsen also released Never Grow Old in 1994 and Never Grow Up in 1998.

Living in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, with her husband Mark Moss, editor of Sing Out! magazine, and their daughter Tamlyn, Hills combined her musical work with stage roles in productions of Quilters, Foxfire, and The Courtship of Carl Sandburg. In 1995 she composed, performed, and sang (with Jay Ansill) the score for Brian Friel’s Lovers. She helped organize the multi-artist concert and album Part of the Village to benefit the Carole Robertson Center in Chicago, a learning program for children and families in need. In September 1997 the center honored her with an award for outstanding service and loyalty.

Hills reached a creative peak in 1997 when, working with illustrator Liz Paxson, she published her first children’s book, Dreamcatcher, drawn from her original song. The full-color edition included a cassette with her singing the song on one side and daughter Tamlyn singing it on the other. Her performances also appeared on tribute albums devoted to the songs of Pete Seeger (Where Have All the Flowers Gone) and Phil Ochs (What’s That I Hear). She closed the year in December when the Kerrville Music Foundation named her Outstanding Female Vocalist. The following year she released the solo album Bittersweet Street, consisting mainly of original material, and in 1999 she collaborated with Michael Smith on the duo project Paradise Lost & Found.

Entering the new millennium Hills maintained both solo and collaborative work. After the 2000 release of the Herdman/Hills/Mangsen trio album At the Turning of the Year, she rejoined Tom Paxton for the duo recording Under American Skies in 2001. The quartet album Fourtold, featuring Hills, Mangsen, Smith, and Steve Gillette, appeared in 2003. As the decade progressed she issued two albums on Collective Works that set prose to music: Beauty Attends: The Heartsongs of Opal Whiteley in 2006 and Ef You Don’t Watch Out: Anne Hills Sings the Poems of James Whitcomb Riley in 2007. In 2009 she returned with another solo album of primarily original songs, her first since Bittersweet Street more than a decade earlier, titled Points of View on the Appleseed Recordings label.