Zoe Mulford has been a Saturday Night Live favorite here at Kendal for years, and she’ll be performing once again this Saturday (August 19, 2023).

Zoe will be fresh off her prize-winning performance on one of the 13 pianos that have cropped up in public spaces around her adopted home town of Manchester, England. The Manchester Jazz Festival sponsored a competition for short videos of “the best street piano performance” played on one of the pianos. Zoe recorded a video on a piano in Manchester’s Victoria Station, and it won the competition.  

Zoe played a shortened version of her song “Purple Piano” (which happens to be a first-person account of life as a piano in a train station). She has performed it at Kendal during past visits. You can watch her prize-winning video here:

Zoe received a Yamaha keyboard as her prize.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of one of Zoe’s performances yet, perhaps this video will give you a sense of why her music is so popular here. She accompanies herself on guitar, banjo, and (obviously) piano. I encourage you to see her in person in the auditorium on Saturday at 7:15.