Kristin Lems is a multitalented and versatile composer, songwriter, folksinger, and performing artist with 20 years of professional experience. Born to a acclaimed concert pianist mother and musical Dutch immigrant father, she was raised in Evanston, Illinois, and studied music from an early age. Her early talent in writing and academics won her numerous accolades, including many poetry awards, a first place from Scholastic Magazines, a National Merit Scholarship, and a Hopwood Poetry Award from University of Michigan.
A child of the sixties, Kristin picked up the guitar, like so many others, and wholeheartedly joined the movement for a better world. With guitar in arms, she brought her stirring singing voice and engaging stage presence to demonstrations and events around the country, for the ERA, safe energy, peace, racial equality, and other pressing causes. She founded the National Women's Music Festival in 1974 and has remained active in promoting women's voices in music and women's rights.
Equally at home before vast crowds or in small living rooms, she has shared the stage with two First Ladies, Ralph Nader, Maya Angelou, Captain Jacques Cousteau, Gloria Steinem, Alan Alda, and many others. Musicians with whom she has appeared include Pete Seeger, Gil Scot-Heron, Country Joe McDonald, Holly Near, Dan Fogelberg, Peter Paul and Mary, Michele Shocked, the BoDeans, and Simon Townshend.
New Yorker magazine called Kristin "a charmer in the most literal and least artificial sense of the word." Gloria Steinem referred to her as "a one woman argument against the notion that the women's movement doesn't have a sense of humor." The Illinois Times said, "Kristin not only has a beautiful voice, clear, crisp and forceful, but she is a very creative and thoughtful lyricist." And of Kristin's performances, The Evansville Courier said, "the performance was simple yet substantive, humorous, yet poignant, and always energetic and warm."
Kristin is included in "The Best of Broadside," a 5-CD anthology on the Smithsonian/Folkways label, which was nominated for two Grammies in 2001. Her album on Flying Fish/Rounder, Born a Woman, was chosen for the Chicago Reader's Top Ten Folk/Country albums. Her songs have been recorded by a dozen other artists, including Butch Hancock, Voices, and others, and have been aired on Dr. Demento, Car Talk, and River City Folk. "Farmer," her tribute to American farm women, was written up in an Ann Landers column. Her songs appear in "Here's to the Women," "Rise up Singing," "Sing Out!" "Songs for Peace," "Songs for Earthlings, "Broadside," "Rounds Galore," the Wobblies' "Little Red Songbook," and other publications.
She has received several awards including the "Woman of Illinois Repute" Award of the Illinois Women's Agenda, the President's Award of Illinois NOW, the Humanist Heroine Award of the American Humanist Association, the Freethought Heroine Award of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, and "Founder's Award" from the Women in the Arts Foundation for founding the National Women's Music Festival.
She also sings professionally in Persian at Persian and Afghan cultural gatherings, sings in French, Spanish and other languages, and performs for children and educators.
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