Christine Lavin

Class of 2019

Christine Lavin is a contemporary folk singer/songwriter/guitarist/humorist/recording artist based in New York City and Geneva, N.Y. who has been strumming and vocalizing her folksy way around thousands of venues across the world for more than three decades.The New York Times has described her as “a garrulous comic observer of contemporary manners” and Billboard called her “Captivating” and said, “Lavin is a central force in the most visible segment of the contemporary folk music scene.”

Lavin recently released her 23rd album, “Spaghettification,” which reached no. 5 on the International Folk DJ Chart. She has won five ASCAP composer awards, the Backstage Bistro Award for Best NYC Singer/Songwriter of the Year, The Kate Wolf Memorial Award, and her album “Good Thing He Can’t Read My Mind” won Album of the Year from the National Association of Independent Record Distributors. She has been the keynote speaker at the North East Regional Folk Art Alliance Conference.

When asked from where she gets the wide array of subjects for her songs, she said, “I get a lot of my ideas just from reading the newspaper.” Those ideas are conveyed in a highly picturesque manner in Lavin’s songs. Lavin includes witty and sometimes biting material in her work, which touches on many spheres of life, from politics and gastronomy to the mores of a multicultural society and the perils of parental authority. The Village Voicenoted, “It is precisely her take on the ordinary that makes her work so extraordinary.”

Performance at the ceremony: Christine Lavin will perform a selection of her original songs.