The closing concert of Collaborative Arts Institute Chicago’s annual Collaborative Works Festival, The American Songbag, will examine Chicago poet, journalist, and urban folk singer Carl Sandburg’s seminal anthology of American Folk songs. Published in 1927, while Sandburg was living in Chicago, the anthology was an instantly popular collection of folk songs that proved to be foundational for the American folk resurgence, inspiring singers like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. A powerful statement of a diverse vision of American identity, Sandburg described the collection as a "ragbag of stripes and streaks of color from nearly all ends of the earth ... rich with the diversity of the United States."

The concert will feature arrangements of many of the songs contained in Sandburg's collection alongside various art song settings of his poetry.