Amelia Ray + Amie Penwell

Black, queer, soul-rock singer-songwriter Amelia Ray returns home to the Bay Area for an intimate night of story and song with Amie Penwell.

Amelia Ray is The Interpreter. This writer, composer and performer engages in barrier-breaking storytelling, and her 31-year career has spanned the fields of music, literature, performance art, film and humanitarianism.
Ray’s work aims to improve understanding and communication between people from different backgrounds. Her catalogue includes cross-genre and multilingual compositions like “Ana no potable,” a song in Spanish dedicated to a former mayor of Madrid, “Dream,” a tribute to musicals that sounds like it came straight from a Broadway production, and the award-winning trip through U.S. racial and music history “Hambone Says”.

The San Francisco native has performed across the States and Europe, was selected to appear at the 2024 National Women’s Music Festival, and was an Art:Omi 2024 Musician-in-Residence. Her performances bring to life intricate, rhythmic and emotional musical stories full of characters as raw, confused and contradictory as we all are.

"Like the best of Cat Power, Feist or David Gray, Penwell’s songs don’t pounce, they pull you in and stay with you long after you are done listening." Amie’s music walks a fine line between piano-driven pop, soul and country while maintaining an alternative aesthetic which allows her the freedom to mold, shape, bend and blend the various styles which influence her the most, joining the likes of Annie Lennox and Aimee Mann, and Peter Gabriel.