Now based in Edinburgh, the pop-pianist plays a homecoming show tonight (Thursday) at Ladies Literary Club, her first in Grand Rapids since 2012 and a chance to showcase her most recent album.
Over the Pond: Rachel Zylstra has now found a home in Edinburgh, Scotland. (Photo/John Walkinshaw)
THE ARTIST: Rachel Zylstra
THE MUSIC: Singer-songwriter-styled piano-pop
WHERE YOU CAN SEE HER: 8 p.m. Thursday (Nov. 9) at the Ladies Literary Club, 61 Sheldon Blvd. SE, Grand Rapids
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For singer-songwriter and classically trained pianist Rachel Zylstra, Grand Rapids’ music scene was always quite kind to her.
‘Soulful, Confessional’: Zylstra brings her songs to Grand Rapids as part of a limited U.S. tour.
“[It] was a special, cool entity and nurturing of me and my music in the early aughts when I was starting out,” said Zylstra, adding that the city has evolved immensely since living here last in the early 2000’s. Most notably, there’s a lot more beer.
“It’s really cool being back here for a few days.”
Zylstra is back in Grand Rapids for a homecoming performance tonight (Nov. 9), playing the Ladies Literary Club at 8 p.m. in a concert hosted by Calvin College. It’s the singer-songwriter’s first appearance here in five years.
Zylstra’s story began in Grand Rapids, but there’s much more to the tale.
After leaving Michigan, she pursued a life and career for several years in New York City, a city that had once enchanted her. That experience prepared her to move on to something new and much farther away: Scotland.
“I felt and followed a strong pull away from New York, to uproot from it and say goodbye,” Zylstra said.
ONE-WAY TICKET TO SCOTLAND, CONTINUING TO WRITE
So after more than a decade of living in New York, she gave up her apartment and toured the United States for seven months while promoting her most recent album, “The Tacit Turn,” which No Depression magazine described as “piano-based stories that meld old soul and new learning” themes.
‘Really Cool’ Being Back in Grand Rapids: Zylstra follows up her W. Michigan tour stop with shows out West. (Photo/Annie Ling)
Then, “after wrestling with what to do next,” Zylstra bought a one-way ticket to Edinburgh, Scotland, where the singer has lived since 2016.
Currently, Zylstra directs music and worship at a church in west Edinburgh, but continues to write music as she gets familiar with Edinburgh’s music scene, occasionally performing at local venues and twice at the annual Free Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
For tonight’s show, part of a limited U.S. tour, concertgoers and West Michigan fans can expect to hear music from 2015’s “The Tacit Turn,” a couple of new songs, “and some older ones that folks might remember from my Grand Rapids time and early New York days.”
Zylstra said she’s excited to share her gamut of styles, promising the concert will be “soulful, verbose, confessional, piano-pop, folk, classical.”
The concert begins at 8 p.m. Admission is $10 ($5 Calvin students); get more information online here. Zylstra follows this by traveling to New Mexico for a show on Sunday, and a concert in Portland, Ore., on Nov 19.
VIDEO: Rachel Zylstra, “Where Was Your Head” (From “The Tacit Turn”)
VIDEO: Rachel Zylstra, “Do Re Mi” (Live, from “The Tacit Turn”)
Copyright 2017, Spins on Music LLC
