Lily Talmers

In the organizer's words:

Lily Talmers is playing her Hafen 2 debut today with a four-piece band - we're really looking forward to it, if only because of her great videos for Life's So Fun and Hope, You Whore . She wouldn't like to be pinned down to one genre. If she does, then it's folk - in its definition as music of the people. Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Gillian Welch and Leonard Cohen are references. Lily Talmer's songs are sometimes dark and carried by wonderful sadness, then again they sparkle with joy and pleasure. We hope you enjoy this concert, which will take place outside if the weather is good.

Lily hopes her voice will lull you into Midwestern-accent-induced submission. Once called "a real artist in a sea of abc family series previews," she hopes her songs are in fact, as the same person also said, "not a finger painting of a mood." A metro-Detroit native who now resides in Brooklyn, New York, released her second full-length album, "Hope is the Whore I Go To," on July 29th, 2022.

A writer, musician, educator, lecturer and community member, Lily studied comparative literature and ethnomusicology during her undergraduate years at the University of Michigan. She is teacher during the spring at the University of Michigan's New England Literature program, and has taught as a guest lecturer through U of M's Residential College and Performing Arts Technology Programs.

With a voice described as ethereal, and lyricism as wistful as it is cutting, Lily credits the likes of Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Gillian Welch and Leonard Cohen for her beginnings as a songwriter, and various odds and ends for her development as a musician and instrumentalist. Her sound is rooted in the 60's folk revival, with moments that reveal her broad fascination with music- the influence of Greek, Lusophone, and classical music all subtly swirl around in her melodies. Her hope is not to be tied down by genre, but rather to engage with "folk music" as it is most loosely defined-- that is, "the music of the people."