Warming up the winter with music

It’s easy to feel isolated during the dark, cold, and sometimes endless-feeling Alaska winters.

Parlor in the Round has created a space to bring our community together through music. This monthly musical improv comedy show, which features Alaskan songwriters from all walks of life, allows artists to trade songs and stories that inspire each other. Tradition is cast aside as the musicians dive into collaborations, jocular inventions and premeditated musings all based on written submissions from the audience.

Parlor has created a potent recipe for bringing people together. The artists create an atmosphere of vulnerability by creating art on the spot and riffing off each other. The audience shapes the show by providing the artists prompts. And the most powerful ingredient: silence — a room full of people quietly listening, with tears, laughter and goosebumps, to the art unfolding before them.

The show fosters collaboration between Alaskan artists and enriches our homegrown music scene. Each month, the artists connect before the show and identify a song prompt to create a new song, to be debuted during the show. In season three, for the prompt “12 year-old-self,” Nick Carpenter wrote “Little Chubby Boy” and since then, it has appeared on his band Medium Build’s latest album and has become a crowd favorite.

As we have worked to foster and grow our local music scene, we have also lifted our eyes and built bridges with musicians from the Lower 48. Season five includes national acts paired with Alaska’s most talented artists to create a show that will have a national audience, create direct artist-to-artist networks for our local artists, and invigorate our creative economy. So far this season we have welcomed the Shook Twins, Peter Mulvey, as well as Kuf Knotz and Christine Elise. January’s show will feature John Craigie and later in the season we will host Joan Osborne (yes, that Joan Osborne), Matt the Electrician, Okaidja Afroso and The Good Time Travelers.

Parlor has grown since its humble beginnings in 2013. Soon, it will drive the musical and professional development of Alaska artists from all over the state; provide an anchor date for block booking that will attract excellent international artists to the show and our remote communities, and be a program that demonstrates diversity, inclusion, discovery, beauty and comic relief through the magic of music.

We have further ambitions, Parlor in the Round is on a journey to become a nationally syndicated radio program the likes of “Mountain Stage,” “eTown” and “Wait, Wait..Don’t Tell Me!” by 2020. We have partnered with KNBA and have released shows from our fourth season already on the air. This season’s shows can be heard on KNBA beginning in the spring.

January’s show is produced in collaboration with Anchorage Folk Festival, and will kick off the festival’s 30th anniversary featuring national artist John Craigie as well as local favorites Michael Howard and Mary Schallert. We invite the Anchorage community to experience this uplifting and heartwarming event. Please join us Jan. 17 at the Wendy Williamson Auditorium at 7:00 p.m. for the free show. You can come with friends or by yourself — no matter what, you will not be alone.

Kevin Worrell is the founder and host of Parlor in the Round and is a member of the Anchorage-based band Super Saturated Sugar Strings.

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