Ann Zimmerman sings her native prairie into universal language. Her confident Kansas style and compelling stage presence have taken her across the continent, often singing a hundred gigs a year — in schools, barns, concert halls, farmers markets, backyards and bus stops — for adults and children.
Her music celebrates the joy, sorrow, grandeur, confusion and silliness of life, especially life on the windy plains. She backs her rich voice with piano, guitar and the audience itself.
Her songs — winners of the Wildflower! Festival, Great American Song, and the Just Plain Folks national song contests — tell surprising stories and paint vivid portraits, leaving audiences laughing, thinking, singing.
Ann has appeared for many years at the Land Institute’s Prairie Festival in Salina and at Winfield’s Walnut Valley Festival.
With four independent recordings of her music, she is also a lawyer and mediator, and an elected board member of Salina public schools.

Ann’s concerts are more than spectator sport. Audiences will be singing along on songs they’ve never heard and won’t soon forget. She brings her voice, unaccompanied or with her acoustic guitar, electric keyboard, and sound system if needed. Just add an audience to fill a space with music and human connection.
Ann tailors her concerts for each occasion. Examples of audience-selected topics include food, gardens, farms, prairies, fish, rural life, workers, plumbers, lawyers, women, medical care, American history, human conflict, and Kansas — its history, geography, weather, culture and people. She has audiences singing just for the joy of it, regardless of topic.
Concerts for children can include Ann’s own songs along with traditional American folk songs and contemporary gems. Ann does songwriting workshops, most often for grades 4 to 6 but adaptable for all ages. Her special multimedia American Revolutionary War concert tells and sings a 60-minute history of that conflict for upper-elementary students.
Ann gives dozens of school concerts yearly celebrating Kansas, which can be around Kansas Day in January or anytime.

$800 ($850 with sound system) – Concerts (mileage from Salina is additional, charged at the federal mileage level).
$200 to $300 – Workshop (in addition to Concert).
Residencies are negotiable.
For multi-day events, Ann is happy to stay as an in-home guest.

Ann can sing additional concerts anywhere in the community — for families, elders, whole communities — with a theme worked out in collaboration with the presenting organization. Regardless of theme, the concerts will be participatory, fun and uplifting.

See primary program description.