Lui Collins

Lui Collins fuses introspective tracks on self-development with vivid depictions of the New England landscape. Her songbook encompasses pieces celebrating seasonal shifts and the agricultural fields of the northeastern United States, yet she has turned more deliberately toward music as a means of probing her own emotional depths. Recent compositions draw directly from her training in bodywork and therapeutic practices at the Centre of Light, a spiritual retreat located in western Massachusetts.

Her professional path began during studies in sociology and music at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, where she sang Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez material in area folk venues. Throughout the mid-1970s she toured the Northeast as half of a duo alongside fellow Vermonter Horace Williams.

The 1978 release of her first solo recording, Made in New England, marked her entry as a solo artist. Baptism of Fire, her follow-up, chronicled the personal transitions that accompanied her marriage to stone mason Rod Zandler and the arrival of the first of her three children. Produced by Scottish fiddler Johnny Cunningham, her third album, There's a Light, featured the track “Ballad of the White Seal Maid,” written jointly with fantasy and children’s-book author Jane Yolen.

Personal tragedy interrupted this trajectory when her youngest son, Tim, arrived in 1986 with a club foot, prompting Collins to declare her withdrawal from performing. She resurfaced in 1993 with the introspective Moondancer, subtitled “The Journey of the Child Within,” which contained eleven original songs plus a second joint effort with Yolen, “Mermaid’s Lullaby.” Work with the Grumbling Gryphon’s Children’s Theater Arts Company led to the 1995 children’s collection North of Mars. Collins revisited material aimed at adult listeners on the 1997 album Stone by Stone.