It’s hard to think of Natalie Merchant without those maniacs (all 10,000 of them) but she’s enjoyed success on her own as a folksy singer-songwriter since the early ’90s. Of particular note is her 2010 album Leave Your Sleep, which some critics called her finest work as a solo artist. Others might call it her magnum opus: an album five years in the making, with more than 100 musicians contributing and lyrics pulled from British and American poetry, everything from E. E. Cummings to Mother Goose. It just started out as a lullaby album, she told The New York Times product of breast-feeding her daughter Lúcia six hours a day and feeling a "burst of creative energy."

"I had all these visions of projects I wanted to do and things I wanted to make, but I couldn’t leave my chair, and I had my hands full. So I just put a tape recorder next to the chair where I was nursing, and I would start singing into it, and that’s where the first songs came from.”

Who says you can’t be a working mom? The result is anything but nursery rhyme rock. She sets folk talks to Celtic music, country, jazz, Klezmer, and the beautiful, soaring strings of a chamber ensemble. It’s well suited for a symphonic concert—which is why tickets to see Merchant perform with the Seattle Symphony are going on sale a year in advance. Yeah. The show’s not until June 22, 2012, at Benaroya Hall, but tickets are available starting Wednesday, August 17, at noon at seattlesymphony.org. Consider yourself forewarned.

Now, a debate: Who did this song better—Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen, or 10,000 Maniacs? I’m on Team Bruce and Patti.