Singer-songwriter and classically trained pianist Anne Heaton has amassed awards and praise from critics, fellow artists and fans with her songs that are by turns “tender, barbed and spiritual” (Washington Post). Her graceful, vulnerable, and sometimes humorous pop-folk songs have captured audience imaginations for over a decade. Heaton has played the Sundance Film Festival, Lilith Fair (2010), and was a featured artist on the New York Times Music Podcast. Heaton has played numerous times on NPR and has shared the stage with some of her favorite artists including Sarah McLachlan and jazz drummer Max Roach. In 2012, she was invited to perform on The Cayamo Cruise as part of Winterbloom (featuring Antje Duvekot, Meg Hutchinson and Natalia Zukerman) with artists such as Keb ‘Mo and The Civil Wars. Known for the infectious energy of her live performances — “a natural performer [with] a rich, soaring voice” (Seattle Times) — Heaton has toured throughout the US since 2001 playing acoustic venues, outdoor theaters, rock clubs, and festivals. In 2005, she won Soul City Cafe, a national competition of live performances and online voting to choose Jewel’s opener for her West Coast Tour. In addition to Jewel’s tour, Heaton has toured as an opening act for Melissa Ferrick and HEM, as well as opened for/performed with Chris Trapper, Jill Sobule and Jonatha Brooke. On the heels of her most recent album, Honeycomb, on February 14, 2014, Anne Heaton releases Dora, a collaborative album of poems-turned-songs with poet Claire Clube. These poem-songs—visceral, ethereal, and set to a mix of singer-songwriter pop, classical and jazz/blues—explore a woman’s relationships with her world and the emotions of divorce. Tragically, in summer 2013, not long after sponsoring a young child in Kenya and just before this album was to be released, poet and collaborator Clube died in a plane crash with her daughter, Bess. “I know she wanted to share these songs with people, and she was a person who lived her life so fully and fearlessly that’s what I’ll take with me,” says Heaton. Heaton studied at the University of Notre Dame, writing her senior thesis on Debussy’s piano works, and then enriched her musical training by studying composition and jazz vocals at The City College of New York. Always a fan of Peter Gabriel, the Indigo Girls, and Tori Amos, she also became fascinated by early American spirituals while living in New York, and sang in a Harlem gospel choir.