Antje Duvekot

“Her songs are stunning paintings of color and shade, and always generate the heat and light that real art should.” says Neil Dorfsman, legendary producer of CDs by Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, and Dire Straits. 

“I think she is going to be the next great American songwriter.  She is writing songs we need to hear right now.” says folk-pop star Ellis Paul.  “She gives us these fresh twists on what we take for granted as the obvious, and reminds us we are all partners with the victims, in a sense.” 

Duvekot sings and writes as though she thinks songs are important; not a means to an end, but tools of survival.  And, for her, that is what they have been.

She was born in Heidelberg, Germany, where she remembers her childhood days as carefree and filled with song, where everyday in school they sang folk songs, and in the summers she was enchanted by the sound of adults singing around a campfire.  The melodies drew her, but more than that, it was the sound of private feelings being shared in song that touched her.

When she was 13, her life changed.  Her mother remarried and her new home was filled with strictness and coldness.  The new family moved to Delaware.  Antje barely spoke English and knew no one.  Music, which had always been important to her, became even more so, but for different reasons. 

“I was so confined by my step dad and my mother that I really didn’t have a life.” she recalls.  “So I had to exist in an abstract environment, and I just poured my entire existence into music because it was the only thing I had access to.  Since then, I’ve always looked at music as a life boat; I don’t know how I would have gotten through that long period of loneliness without it.... The only time I was truly happy as a teenager was walking around the neighborhood, listening to my folk tapes”

Duvekot had discovered the folk world of urban songwriters like Ellis Paul, John Gorka and Ani DiFranco.  “My English wasn’t so good yet,” she recalls, “but I just loved the kind of melancholy, solitary aspects of these songs.  And I could tell these people were saying something important.  That was profound and meaningful to me, even before I knew what it was they were saying.  It was like these artists were actually talking to me...”

Antje is uncomfortable talking about her teen years, but they are the key to the powerful empathy that informs everything she writes -- the understanding of one for whom hurt had been a way of life. 

Duvekot believes her bicultural upbringing, and her relative newness to English, helped shape her unique way with a song.  When she first came to America, she says, “I wasn’t communicating very well with people, just with myself through my art.  And I think that is a different way, not as linear or analytical.” It has resulted in a poetic palette truly her own.

Being part of two cultures “I have a bit of an outsiders perspective on right and wrong.  I know there can be different possibilities” she says.  “A lot of Americans think ‘This is the way it is.’  And in Germany, its more ‘This is the way it is here.’  I’ve seen that things aren’t the same everywhere.  So in my writing, I challenge the norms of our value system.  I want to explore the ‘what if’s’ about all that.”

What does Duvekot hope people get from her songs?  “I hope people get softened up inside, emotionally moved.  And happy.  Because I think it makes you happy to be moved, even by a sad song.  I’ve never found anything like songs, that can get so many elements of my heart and brain working all at once.  They’re just a few minutes long, but you can live a lifetime in a song.”

“I have yet to hear anyone like Antje.” says Winter Wind Chair Becky Grider.”  I am mesmerized by her voice and her words.  She has an uncanny way of pulling you in and you want to stay there in her songs.  You just don’t want them to end.  Her show at the Depot sold out last year and we are fortunate to get her back. She is a rising star and I hope people will come out to hear her in such a beautiful, intimate venue while they can.”

For additional concert information, or to purchase tickets, contact The Performing Arts Studio at 405-307-9320.  PAS office hours in the Depot are Tuesday through Friday from 8:00 am to 3:00 pm, and Sunday from 1:00 to 5:00.  Tickets may also be purchased on-line by clicking on the "Buy Now" button above.  For additional information on Antje Duvekot, go to http://www.antjeduvekot.com/.

The Performing Arts Studio Winter Wind Concerts are made possible in part by grants from: The Norman Arts Council; Norman Chamber of Commerce Arts Grants; Oklahoma Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.  Sponsors include Tom McAuliffe: Don Cies Real Estate; Mark and Teresa Marsee, Avante Skin Care; and Nancy McClellan.  Contributors include Skye Diers: Gingerbread Kindergarten and Nursery School, and Friends Becky Grider and Danna Primm.