Christine Lavin & the 2026 Performing Songwriter Competition
Christine Lavin started her professional life as a waitress/bread baker at the Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, NY in 1975 where she met Dave Van Ronk who encouraged her to study guitar with him in NYC. She took his advice and is now a singer/songwriter/guitarist/recording artist/author/videographer based in New York City. Her latest solo album, her 25th, ON MY WAY TO HOOTERVILLE, includes 10 new songs and one re-worked song, “Ramblin’ Waltz,” a re-telling of her time in 1975 when she was an entourage driver for the first week of Bob Dylan‘s iconic “Rolling Thunder Revue” tour.
In 2023 Christine released “The Seasons Project,” an 80-song seasonal compilation that features the work of 63 American, Canadian, British and Irish singer/songwriters. Christine assembled this compilation to help guide future historians and folklorists to authentic music being written in the last two decades of the 20th Century and the first two of the 21st Century.
In 2024 she is completing her 26th solo album, DRUM SCHOOL DROPOUT, hoping to have it completed in 2025.
In October 2024 there were 11 performances of “InunDATEd,” a 90 minute theatrical production that showcased nine of Christine’s songs by the York Theatre in NYC. There will be one more workshop production before the show is released world-wide. The most recent production starred two thrilling Broadway veterans, Kate Rockwell and Taylor Crousore
HONORS AND AWARDS: In May 2021 Christine received an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from her alma mater, the State University of New York at Brockport. In an odd twist, she has a younger brother also named Chris (born on Columbus Day) who also in May 2021 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from his alma mater, Hobart/William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY.
