Rachael Kilgour

We first heard this songwriter as one half of the duo Sound an Echo, and then we had her in the Family Room during the pandemic. Rachael Kilgour is a Minnesotan songwriter and performing artist whose sincere, lyric-driven work has been called both brave and humane. The 2015 grand prize winner of the international NewSong Music Performance & Songwriting Competition and winner of the 2017 Kerrville New Folk Contest, Rachael has been featured at NYC’s Lincoln Center, at The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and by the ASCAP Music Cafe at the Sundance Film Festival. Married in her early twenties, Rachael chronicled her life as a young parent in a same-sex partnership and addressed sociopolitical issues from government corruption to income inequality and religious hypocrisy. In 2014, divorce brought an unwanted end to her role as a member of the family she had helped to grow. In the aftermath, Kilgour found solace in songwriting. Rachael was awarded a 2020 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant to focus on a songwriting project about the life and recent death of her father, and the album, “My Father Loved Me,” is out now, and it’s terrific.

The Ark’s Artist Spotlight Series is made possible with support from the Ford Motor Company Fund. It is presented live, and also livestreamed on The Ark’s Facebook page.  

Tonight’s show is FREE (nonperishables accepted for Food Gatherers).