Anaïs Mitchell nominated for Grammy
'The singer-songwriter and playwright was raised in Quaker circles in Vermont, where she attended Quaker youth events.'
The Quaker-raised singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell has been nominated for a Grammy Award for her song ‘Bright Star’. The track, from Anaïs’ self-titled album, has been nominated for Best American Roots Song.
Anaïs Mitchell described herself as ‘thrilled and grateful’. The singer-songwriter and playwright was raised in Quaker circles in Vermont, where she attended Quaker youth events. In January she told the Friend: ‘It was this beautiful scene: an alternative to my rural public high school. It felt so safe to be whoever you were… I loved that. I don’t attend Meeting now, so I’m not sure I get to regard myself as a Quaker, but I have a lot of love and affinity for Quaker values, and my eight-year-old now attends Quaker First Day School virtually. I didn’t push that on her; she loves it.’
The Vermont-raised singer also told the crowd at the Greenbelt Festival in August about her Quaker upbringing as she took to the stage on the opening evening.
‘Bright Star’ comes from her first solo album for a decade, after the runaway success of the folk opera Hadestown which won eight awards, including Best Musical, at the 2019 Tony Awards. She has described the song as about ‘looking back on years of restless pursuit… making peace with the source of that longing: the Muse, the Great Unknown, the One That Got Away – those things that motivate us that we never can touch’.
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