OUR VOCALISTS
Anaïs Adair
was born in Fiesole, Italy and was raised primarily in the southeast United States in a Polish and Bessarabian Jewish immigrant family. She graduated with an interdisciplinary BFA in performance art, experimental sound, video and photography from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and later studied woodworking at the Appalachian Center for Crafts. Anaïs has lived in New Orleans since 2009 where she is an active member of the music, theater and dance community and works as the Handwork/Fiber Arts instructor at the Waldorf School of New Orleans.
Renee Anderson
is a multimedia artist and performer, community organizer, student of plant medicine, and longtime vocalist. She grew up singing in community spaces with her family in the small Mississippi River town of Alton, IL. In her 16 + years living in New Orleans, she has actively participated in a variety of collaborative projects, including community choirs, organizing DIY parades, creating and performing in local theater productions, and cooking/serving weekly with Community Kitchen. Musically, she plays clarinet in community brass bands and has sung with a variety of groups through the years, including Fever Dreams, Self Sustaining Dream Palace, Tasche and the Psychedelic Roses, and with Sabine McCalla. She has a BA in Environmental Studies and is currently pursuing her Masters in Counseling.
Lou Carrig
grew up playing classical piano but found her creative home in piano accordion and vocal traditions of Southeastern Europe. A first-generation American of Irish descent, Lou has spent the past 15 years studying folk music across the Balkans, drawn by a desire to connect with ancestral lineages and living traditions. She holds a B.A. in Music Performance from the University of New Orleans, and is a former Fulbright Scholar to Bulgaria, where she studied at the Academy of Music, Dance and Fine Arts (AMTII) in Plovdiv and conducted ethnographic fieldwork with UNESCO-awarded na visoko singing elders in the Rhodope Mountains. Lou is the founder and director of Trendafilka, a board member of the East European Folklife Center, and performs regularly with Blato Zlato, Wit’s End Brass Band, Bulgar Klezmer Band, and as a guest artist with Panorama Jazz Band, New Resonance Orchestra, and the Louisiana Philharmonic.
Ruby Corbyn-Ross
has loved singing from an early age, and began studying polyphonic vocal music at the age of 15, attending several Village Harmony singing camps in New England, Canada, and South Africa, and touring Europe with Northern Harmony in 2005 and 2010. While attending Wesleyan University, where she double-majored in Music and French Studies, she founded Eastern European a cappella group Slavei, which later led her and two other former Slavei members to form (former) New Orleans Balkan vocal trio Pyeya, and later Balkan band Blato Zlato. In addition to Eastern European vocal traditions, Ruby has studied Classical South Indian Carnatic singing and drumming, Japanese taiko drumming, and a range of American folk musics, including Country, Blues, Shape-note, Jazz, Gospel and “Singer-Songwriter” folk. She is currently on sabbatical pursuing a master’s degree in Communication Sciences & Disorders at the University of Virginia to become a Speech Language Pathologist.
OAK FATE
has been singing in choirs and playing music since they were six years old. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, they were first captivated by Bulgarian folk music as a teenager. Over the years, they have enjoyed workshops hosted by New York’s Ukrainian Village Voices, Seattle’s Dunava, and the East European Folklife Center. They moved to New Orleans in 2021 and have been a member of Trendafilka since 2023. When they aren’t singing, they love composing, transcribing, and teaching music lessons.
ANNALISA KELLY (ANNIE)
grew up mostly outside the United States in Russia, Serbia, Austria, Turkey, and Italy. An avid lover of Bulgarian folk music and vocal traditions, she has been studying and singing Eastern European music in a variety of musical groups for almost 20 years and currently performs with the groups Blato Zlato and Trendafilka. In addition to Eastern European music, she has a passion for community/urban planning and public service, working with a variety of non-profits and government entities in the New Orleans area.
GRACE KENNEDY
lives in the French Quarter of New Orleans. She is an amateur historian and leads immersive tours at The New Orleans Pharmacy Museum. Grace writes original music as Grape Candy, and performs locally in theater and film projects with the likes of Goat in the Road Productions and Third Class One Acts. She has performed with Trendafilka since 2018.
maria rowinska
has been singing, playing, and performing since age 5. Raised between the United States and Poland, she has always used music as her medium to explore the intersections of culture and personal identity, a pursuit that took her from Poland to the U.S., Brazil, and Puerto Rico before arriving in New Orleans in 2021. She holds a B.A. in Vocal Performance from Berklee College of Music, with a focus in Brazilian music. In addition to performing with Trendafilka, she sings with the electronic Afro-Carribbean project ÌFÉ, and serves as the Recording Studio Manager and Music Programs Coordinator at the Material Institute.
elisabeth stancioff
grew up in rural Maine surrounded by a big musical family who took a special pride in their Bulgarian roots. She was introduced to Balkan music at a young age, and even lived in Bulgaria for a year as a five-year-old, but it wasn’t until joining Trendafilka in the spring of 2018 that she really began her own exploration into polyphonic singing and the folk music traditions of Eastern Europe. When she is not singing with Trendafilka she plays viola and sings harmony in a band called The Light Set, practices Jiu Jitsu, and works as a transportation planner for the RTA (though her undergrad degree is in Slavic Studies). She loves riding bikes with friends through the streets of New Orleans, spending time with family up in Maine, and making things out of wood.