Christine Lavin & our 2026 Performing Songwriter Competition | Rose Garden Coffeehouse
Concerts
Folk
Veteran folk artist and fearless musical storyteller
Christine Lavin & finals of our 2026 Performer Songwriter Competition
$30 + Eventbrite fees in advance / $35 at door
The finalists in our competition will perform prior to Christine Lavin. They include:
Eric Behr,
Rhode Island
Thomas Charles Clukey
, Maine
Allison Strong
, New Jersey
ABOUT OUR FEATURED ACT, CHRISTINE LAVIN:
Christine Lavin
started her professional life as a waitress/bread baker at the Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, NY in 1975 where she met Dave Van Ronk who encouraged her to study guitar with him in NYC. She took his advice and is now a singer/songwriter/guitarist/recording artist/author/videographer based in New York City. Her latest solo album, her 25th,
ON MY WAY TO HOOTERVILLE
, includes 10 new songs and one re-worked song, "Ramblin' Waltz," a re-telling of her time in 1975 when she was an entourage driver for the first week of
Bob Dylan
's iconic
"
Rolling Thunder Revue"
tour.
In 2023 Christine released "The Seasons Project," an 80-song seasonal compilation that features the work of 63 American, Canadian, British and Irish singer/songwriters. Christine assembled this compilation to help guide future historians and folklorists to authentic music being written in the last two decades of the 20th Century and the first two of the 21st Century.
In 2024 she is completing her 26th solo album,
DRUM SCHOOL DROPOUT,
hoping to have it completed in 2025.
In October 2024 there were 11 performances of "InunDATEd," a 90 minute theatrical production that showcased nine of Christine's songs by the York Theatre in NYC. There will be one more workshop production before the show is released world-wide. The most recent production starred two thrilling Broadway veterans, Kate Rockwell and Taylor Crousore
HONORS AND AWARDS
: In May 2021 Christine received an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from her alma mater, the State University of New York at Brockport. In an odd twist, she has a younger brother also named Chris (born on Columbus Day) who also in May 2021 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from his alma mater, Hobart/William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY.
What are the odds there would be two Chris Lavins from the same family to both be awarded honorary doctorates one week apart?
In September 2019 Christine spent a month at the artist retreat
Yaddo
in Saratoga Springs. Three of the songs she wrote there are included on her latest
HOOTERVILLE
album
.
In April 2019 she was inducted into the Rochester, NY Music Hall Of Fame along with Al Jardine of
The Beach Boys
. She received a 2012 Nightlife Award given annually to the best concert and cabaret performers in New York City. In November 2011 her book
COLD PIZZA FOR BREAKFAST: A MEM-WHA??
(Tell Me Press, New Haven) won the
43rd Annual ASCAP Deems Taylor Award
for excellence in writing about music. is available in paperback, kindle, and audio book formats, with the foreword written by actor/playwright/singer/songwriter
Jeff Daniels
. Christine has also won five
ASCAP Composer Awards
, 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 produced 12 compilations, and so far these compilations have showcased songs of over 100 songwriters whose work she admires. The food-themed compilation,
ONE MEAT BALL
, includes a 96-page cookbooklet that Christine edited — songs and recipes by
Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton, Dave Van Ronk
, and many more, including a surprise appearance by international -- and now late -- gigastar
Dame Edna
.
Sigh.
For four years she hosted
"Slipped Disks"
on xm satellite radio, playing CDs slipped to her backstage by compatriots, and was occasion guest host for
City Folk Sunday Supper
on WFUV-FM at Fordham University. She also writes freelance for various publications (
The Washington Post, Huffington Post, St. Petersburg Times, Performing Songwriter,
and
Delta "Sky" Magazine
). Her song
AMOEBA HOP
is a science/music book by illustrator Betsy Franco Feeney (Puddle Jump Press), receiving the stamp of approval from
The International Society of Protistologists
, and a
"Best Book Award"
from
The American Association for The Advancement of Science.
THE PLUTO FILES: THE RISE AND FALL OF AMERICA'S FAVORITE PLANET
(W.W. Norton) by
Neil deGrasse Tyson
, head of the Hayden Planetarium in NYC, includes the complete lyrics to Christine's song "Planet X," which details Pluto's history and planetary status debate in rhyme. Neil included Christine in a live concert event at The Beacon Theater in NYC,
"Comedians & Astronomers,"
and his voice is on that recording, her 23rd album,
SPAGHETTIFICATION.
Christine performs concerts all over the US, Canada, and points beyond (Australia, Germany, Israel), often hosting knitting circles and Downton Abbey-style napkin folding backstage at each show. Songs of hers have been performed by artists as diverse as Broadway stars
Betty Buckley, Sutton Foster, Karen Ziemba
, and
Klea Blackhurst,
cabaret divas
Andrea Marcovicci
.
Barbara Brussell
, and
Colleen McHugh
, the
a cappella
Dartmouth Decibelles
, and
The Accidentals
, winners of the National Harmony Sweepstakes Championship.
On A Winter’s Night,
her first seasonal compilation project, (20 artists) became a four-artist national tour that first hit the road back in January 1991 and was a five-artist tour that hit the road November 2019, including
Christine, Cliff Eberhardt, Patty Larkin, Cheryl Wheeler,
and
John Gorka --
only to be abruptly sidelined by the pandemic on March 12, 2020. The remainder of those dates went on as rescheduled in February/March 2022.
LATEST PROJECTS
: Christine started creating videos for her songs in 2011, and now creates them for other artists (including
Michael Feinstein, Noel Paul Stookey, Janis Ian, Judy Collins, Craig Werth,
Julie Gold
,
David Ippolito
and others).
Christine was the keynote speaker in November 2016 at the annual North East Regional Folk Alliance Conference (NERFA) in Stamford, CT, and that keynote address has become the basis for her next book, which will take up where
COLD PIZZA
left off. She was also keynote speaker at the
Lifespan National Caregivers Conference
in 2017 in Huntsvile, Alabama.
Until November 2018, Ms. Lavin was very involved with the care of her aging mother in Geneva, NY. She relocated there twice, while continuing her full time performing in 2010 - 2012, and then again in 2016, to help out. She taught herself to make videos to help her mother remember daily events, having no short term memory. Soon she started making videos for her own music, and now videos for others. Her mother died in November 2018 at the age of 99-1/2, and her family cherishes those videos, which inadvertently spurred Ms. Lavin’s career on in an unexpected direction.
Information Source: The Rose Garden Coffeehouse | eventbrite