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| Collins founded her own label, Molly Gamblin Music, in 1993, with the release of her 4th CD, Moondancer, followed by North of Mars, for children, in 1995. Collins now has 8 solo CD’s to her credit, the most recent, Closer, released in 2006 on the Waterbug Records label. Her collection of poetry, Moon of Ripe Berries, published in 2001, is now in its third printing.
The Boston Globe dubs Collins “one of New England’s first and brightest stars,” and Sing Out! Magazine calls her “incomparable.” Renowned guitarist Dave van Ronk called her “one of the best guitarist-arrangers I have heard in years.” Michael Devlin of Music Matters Review writes: "... there are relatively few artists who are bringing a traditional sensibility to modern songwriting, and in the process creating new traditional music. Lui Collins is among the barefoot royalty of this group..."
An accomplished vocalist, guitarist, and banjo player, Collins has until recently geared most of her recordings toward the “grown-ups” who have frequented her concerts on the folk circuit. But alongside that work, Collins has been performing for and working with children since her own three were young, including collaborations with the Grumbling Gryphons Children’s Theater in 1992 and 1993. In 1997 she relocated to western Massachusetts, where she has gradually shifted the focus of her work from touring to teaching in her community. In 2002, Collins trained with early childhood music program Music Together of Princeton, NJ, and founded Hilltown Music Together. In 2007 Collins began research and development on Kids’ Jam, an educational program for 5-7 year-olds, for which she has since adapted, written and recorded 10 seasonal collections of songs. Besides Kids’ Jam, her other current creative focus is learning bossa nova guitar and brushing up on her Portuguese - she lived in Brazil for a year in the late 60’s and has been enamored with the music and the language ever since.
Collins’s concerts, still a joy to her, if more rare these days, are an expression of the complex and insightful woman she is: wise elder and whimsical spirit, music theory buff and old time banjo player. Mother, grandmother, woods walker, writer, teacher… somehow all these parts and more emerge in her concerts as she engages the audience in an intimate dialogue of song and poem, voice, guitar and banjo. Andrew Calhoun of Waterbug Records says, “Lui Collins sings the way people did a great long time ago, before most of us forgot how to breathe.” And as guitarist/folksinger/songwriter Geoff Bartley says, “Lui’s got the juju!”
Want to know more about Lui? See these biographical notes from an article by Lahri Bond in Dirty Linen, circa 1997.
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