Make plans to see Kat Edmonson in April

In little more than a decade, Kat Edmonson has emerged as one of the most distinctive performers in contemporary American music.

The Texas native forged her sound performing in small rooms and clubs, then touring worldwide and performing with the likes of Lyle Lovett, Chris Isaak, Jamie Cullum and Gary Clark, Jr.

Edmonson will perform at the Oats Park Arts Center’s Barkley Theater on April 21.

Individual tickets are $17 for members and $20 for nonmembers. To purchase tickets, call 775-423-1440, or email charts@phonewave.net. Tickets also are available at Jeff’s Copy Express and ITT@Naval Air Station Fallon. All seats are reserved.

The box office, Art Bar and galleries open at 7 with her performance at 8 p.m.

Not only will Edmonson perform Saturday evening, she will also be part of the free Conversation with the Artist program earlier in the day as she discusses “Following your Heart” at 3 p.m., also at the Oats Park Art Center.

Her newest album, “Old Fashioned Gal,” is coming out April 27, and her performance in Fallon in April will be the second show of the Old Fashioned Gal Spring 2018 tour.

Rich in affection for the past but bracingly alive in the present, the 11 original songs on “Old Fashioned Gal” tell a story –– actually, a classic Hollywood “movie” that took shape in Edmonson’s imagination as she began to write them. These songs have all the feeling and the craft, even the entertaining bounce, of the Great American Songbook, from Irving Berlin to Joni Mitchell, but they are unmistakably Edmonson’s songs, taking the full measure of her own voice, literally and figuratively.

The inimitable voice in which she sings is a musical prism, crystalline and precise, refracting and transforming what shines through it. The voice in which she writes is clear, intensely aware and to the point – –an “old fashioned gal” in the here and now.

Her three previous albums revealed a singer discovering, in her own songs, a repertoire only she could imagine. A critic for the Boston Globe called “Way Down Low,” her second album, “one of the greatest vocal albums I’ve ever heard.” Her third, “The Big Picture,” took greater advantage of her songwriting abilities. The Austin Chronicle’s critic noted she “employs lessons gleaned from the Great American Songbook while creating an aura unmistakably her own,” adding that the songs emerge “fresh and dewy ... Edmonson’s voice swells and dips and weaves with effortless precision, arresting without belting.”