Soprano Custer La Rue, whose style of singing is informed both by classical training and by her interest in traditional music, has achieved a rare fluency in the styles, dialects, and history of the songs she performs. As one reviewer has written, "her delivery and the conviction in her pure, unpretentious voice are such that we can imagine La Rue [to be] the first and true singer of these tunes."

Custer LaRue is an award-winning graduate of the Peabody conservatory of Music, where she was a pupil of Mlle. Flore Wend. A native of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, she teaches voice at Mary Baldwin College. Her recent Dorian CD of Anglo-American traditional ballads (Custer LaRue Sings the Daemon Lover), accompanied by members of the Baltimore Consort, placed high on the Billboard charts for several months, and her new Dorian release, The True Lovers' Farewell, has received outstanding reviews.