Tanya Huang and Dorise Blackmon met in New York through a mutual friend and were brought to New Orleans by music itself. Tanya, originally from Taiwan, is a classically trained violinist whose expressive range and improvisational fluency made her one of the most distinctive street musicians in the city. Dorise, from Connecticut, played a hollow-neck Blackbird carbon fiber guitar and provided the rhythmic foundation and personality that gave the duo its unique chemistry. They set up regularly at the corner of Royal and St. Louis streets in the French Quarter, and their presence there became as much a part of the landscape as the cobblestones.
Their repertoire was deliberately boundless: “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” next to Carmen, “Hotel California” next to “Could You Be Loved,” “Eleanor Rigby” next to “Rock With You.” This eclecticism drew an audience that could not be categorized either — tourists, locals, musicians, children, strangers pulled off the street by a sound they had not expected. It is widely believed that Tanya’s story inspired the character Annie in HBO’s Treme, played by Lucia Micarelli.
