The list of collaborators for Patty Larkin’s latest, “25,” a collection of 25 love songs celebrating 25 years in music, says all you need to hear about her career.

Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Bruce Cockburn, Willy Porter, Suzanne Vega, Dar Williams, Rosanne Cash, Chris Smither, and Janis Ian are among those who lend a hand to the project, her 12th album.

Larkin (Photo | Jana Leon)

Larkin started recording the songs, unplugged versions of previously-issued tunes, in September 2009, just two weeks after her mother died. “The fact that my friends were at my back moved me through that time, and gave me a sense of purpose,” she says.

She sent the studio recordings to her collaborators to add their voices. “Every package that came back was like a message in a bottle. Something exotic and wonderful, and new. A surprise. It often brought tears to my eyes to hear their voices with mine, to listen to their musical minds at work creating beauty,” Larkin says. “It has made me grateful and humble, ready to listen — to begin again.”

The beginnings for Larkin came in the coffeehouses of Oregon and San Francisco during college before she moved to Boston to study jazz guitar at the Berklee College of Music. That proficiency on the guitar makes her sonic palette broader and deeper than many of her compatriots in the new folk movement. There’s both a delicacy and a power to her playing. Her lyrics run from rueful ruminations to impressionistic poetry. And then there’s her voice, smoky, sexy, and ever-inviting.

For Larkin, “25″ is a natural progression in her career and her music, another path she’s trying. “I recently joked that there is no longer a Music Business, just Music. “25″ is a testament to that idea,” she says. “Here are artists I’ve admired and been inspired by, some of whom I’ve known for more than a quarter of a century, who are continuing to create songs of worth and meaning, regardless of the state of the “music industry.” Renegades and troubadors, humorists and historians, these are singers who have stopped me in my tracks and made me aware of beauty and passion and joy. I am grateful to each one of them for the grace they have bestowed upon this collection of songs. Each and every one of them is a flower in bloom for me, and together they have restored my spirit and given me hope.”

Larkin will be at The Jewish Mother, 31st and Pacific in Virginia Beach, Friday at 9 p.m. Tickets at http://www.inticketing.com/ or at the door.