Mary Chapin Carpenter Returns To Scottsdale Center For The Performing Arts in June

After a crowd-pleasing 2019 concert at Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts with Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin Carpenter is set to return to the venue on June 15, 2022, for a show focused on her own material.

"When Mary Chapin Carpenter last performed here in 2019, she and Shawn Colvin wowed us all with a set that included some of their classic tunes alongside new songs and beloved covers," said Abbey Messmer, director of programming at the center. "I'm looking forward to hearing her thoughtful insight - as a skillful songwriter - on politics, relationships and personal emotions."

With hits like "Passionate Kisses," "I Feel Lucky" and "He Thinks He'll Keep Her," Carpenter has won five Grammys (with 16 nominations), two Country Music Association Awards and two Academy of Country Music Awards. She is one of only 15 female members of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. And over the course of her acclaimed career, she has sold more than 16 million records.

In 2020,a??she recorded two albums: "The Dirt And The Stars," released in August 2020, and "One Night Lonely," recorded live without an audience at the legendary Filene Center at Wolf Trap in Virginia during the COVID-19 shutdown. The latter was nominated for the 2022 Grammy for Best Folk Album.

Pitchfork has called Carpenter "one of country music's most reliable and empathetic songwriters," but early in her career, Rolling Stone noted that she was an "unlikely country star," noting the musical influence of both Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell on Carpenter. And The New York Times described Carpenter's music as "an unclassifiable hybrid of pop, folk and country that she performs in the low, steady voice of someone confiding her thoughts in a journal."

"Carpenter's near-contralto is a calm, womanly voice that conveys a very grown-up mixture of resignation and perseverance," according to The New York Times. "It is a voice made to engage in hushed heart-to-heart all-night conversations about things that really matter."

In speaking about "The Dirt And The Stars" - produced bya??Ethan Johnsa??(Ray Lamontagne, Paul McCartney, Kings of Leon) and recorded entirely live at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios in Bath, England - Carpenter quoted the writer Margaret Renkl.

"'We are all in the process of becoming.' That doesn't stop at a certain age," Carpenter said. "To be always a student of art and music and life, as she says, that, to me, is what makes life worth living. The songs are very personal and they're difficult in some ways - and definitely come from places of pain and self-illumination, but also places of joy, discovery and the rewards of self- knowledge. They arrived from looking outward as much as inward, speaking to life changes, growing older, politics, compassion, #MeToo, heartbreak, empathy, the power of memory, time and place. There are many themes, but they all come back to that initial truth that we are all constantly 'becoming' through art and expression."

Carpenter will perform June 15 at Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, 7380 E. 2nd St., Scottsdale, Arizona. Tickets are $36 - $60. Visit ScottsdalePerformingArts.org/events or call Scottsdale Arts Guest Services at 480-499-TKTS (8587) for more information. Please note that the tour rider for this artist requires that all audience members wear face masks for the duration of the performance.