Evento

Anna Mieke / 13th Note / 27.05.2020

Anna Mieke, or Anna-Mieke Bishop, is a musician and songwriter from Wicklow, Ireland, who performs on Greek bouzouki, guitar and piano. Themes and inspiration for Annas songs stem from a diverse and colourful background of experience: learning Maori songs at school in New Zealand; hitch-hiking through Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, picking up traditional songs along the way; cycling from her home in Wicklow to the southern tip of Spain; living in Granada, and then, in Cork, performing cello in the experimental improv group, HEX.

As a solo performer and collaborative artist, she has joined forces with a diverse mélange of other artists, most notably Brían Mac Gloinn (of award-winning folk duo Ye Vagabonds), who contributes drones on Indian harmonium and fiddle. Other, more recent, collaborators are Matthew Jacobson (of contemporary jazz ensemble Insufficient Funs) adding percussion and Ryan Hargadon on saxophone, clarinet and synth.

From performing in larger venues such as the National Concert Hall and to opening the inaugural RTE Radio Folk Awards in Vicar Street, to underground caves, to manor house ballrooms, to tiny cafés and bookshops, to the precarious ruins of a church, to forests in the hills of France, Anna Mieke has performed in a curious combination of spaces. Rooted in folk, the record philosophise through abstract lyrics about place, age, belonging and various societal misalignments.

Its a strikingly confident collection of 10 songs, full of blue sky thinking and wide open horizons...A deliriously renewable energy source.
Siobhán Long, The Irish Times, 4-star review