For more than 40 years, singer/songwriter Judy Collins has been thrilling audiences worldwide, none more than at her recent Café Carlisle appearances in New York City where she sang songs from her new album, Paradise. One of those songs is about and is dedicated to the 343 firefighters who lost their lives on 9/11 in the collapse of the Twin Towers. Collins talks about how she visited different firehouses in New York to sing the song for the firefighters, saying she wanted to make sure that it was okay with them before she recorded it.

Collins, who was born in Seattle, Washington, made her public debut at 13, performing Mozart’s “Concerto for Two Pianos, but it was the music of such artists as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger that sparked her love of lyrics and her switch from the piano to the guitar. Judy, who now lives in New York, has paid homage to her Irish heritage with such recordings as “Danny Boy,” “She Moved Through the Fair” and “The Kerry Dancers.”