EVENTS

RiverArts Festival – Sat. June 6
Performing with guitarist Marc Shulman
Featuring songs from the new album, Rhapsody

BIO

Anna Dagmar is a New York-based pianist, singer-songwriter, conductor, and educator. Her fifth album, Rhapsody (2025), was produced by Ben Wittman (Paula Cole, Sting, Jonatha Brooke), and features her original songs, piano playing, singing, and string arrangements. Dagmar plays keyboard for & Juliet on Broadway and teaches orchestra in Rye, NY.

The word “rhapsody” can mean stitching songs together, or an outpouring of feelings. Dagmar’s album embodies both definitions. Rhapsody sews together themes of childhood reverie from swaths of classical, jazz, folk, pop, and musical theater traditions. The immersive storyteller album brims with impressionistic lyricism and uninhibited musicality.

The title track, “Rhapsody,” tells the story of a family friend Dagmar played piano with when she was a child. This song also touches on the hardship of Alzheimer’s, and reveals that music can be a keeper of memories. “Rhapsody” glimmers with harmony vocals by folk artist Lucy Kaplansky and Dagmar’s daughter Eloise Winter Webb.

On “Shadows,” Dagmar explores her daughter’s childhood and hopes for the future. It captures tender moments when her baby would crawl under the grand piano and play with shadow puppets on the wall. The interplay between light and shadow also reflects Dagmar’s personal journey surviving ocular melanoma. Intimate piano chords merge with fingerpicked guitar, warm vocals, and delicate strings.

The jaunty “You Bring Out the Child In Me” celebrates young adventures and first love. The music synthesizes many of Dagmar’s influences, including Billy Joel, Joni Mitchell, Sara Bareilles, and Wynton Kelly. Sweet melodies and swinging strings crescendo into a whimsical jazz piano solo.

“It Won’t Take Words” is a lilting dance, stylistically similar to Dagmar’s songs “Daydream” and “Falling Star.” The album includes Dagmar’s solo rendition along with a duet version, featuring jazz singer Theo Bleckmann (Uri Caine, Meredith Monk). Plucked upright bass and guitar soundscapes create a cinematic atmosphere.

“Mercy” was commissioned by The Canales Project and premiered at the National Gallery. Dagmar composed the song in honor of Sister Marilyn Lacey, founder of Mercy Beyond Borders, an organization which provides education and business training to women and girls in South Sudan, Malawi, Kenya, Uganda, and Haiti. The recording highlights gospel vocalists Crystal Monee Hall, Carolynn Clyne, and Marcelle Davies-Lashley.

Rhapsody features A-list musicians including Sara Caswell, Joyce Hammann, Lois Martin, Jody Redhage Ferber, Ike Sturm, Richard Hammond, Marc Shulman, and Ben Wittman. These players have credits with artists such as Paul McCartney, Dar Williams, Suzanne Vega, Sufjan Stevens, and Esperanza Spalding.

Dagmar is a two-time Gold Prize winner of the mid-Atlantic Songwriting Contest, a National Kerrville New Folk and Rocky Mountain Folk Festival finalist, and a composer in the BMI Advanced Musical Theater Writing Workshop. She has received commissions from The Canales Project, NY Council on the Arts, University of California Irvine, Messiah University, and Symphony Space.

She has worked as a Broadway musician for & Juliet, Hadestown, and Waitress, and is a member of Maestra, an organization that provides support, visibility and community to the women who make the music in the musical theater industry. She holds an M.A. in Conducting and Music Education from Hunter College and a B.M. in Jazz Performance and Music Education from the Eastman School of Music.

VIDEOS