Aoife O'Donovan

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Aoife O'Donovan 2009

Aoife O'Donovan (pronounced: I-Fah, born November 18, 1982 in Newton , Massachusetts ) is an American singer and songwriter. It was primarily as lead singer of the formation Crooked Still known.

biography

O'Donovan grew up in Newton near Boston as the eldest daughter of a family of musicians. Aoife's father, Brian O'Donovan, hosts the local folk radio show A Celtic Sojourn . The paternal family comes from Clonakilty ( County Cork ) on the south west coast of Ireland. In her musical development, Aoife was shaped by the Celtic tradition ( Irish Folk ), which she also met on numerous vacation stays with her grandparents in Ireland, as well as American folk greats such as Joan Baez , Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell .

At the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, she studied "Contemporary Improvisation" ( Contemporary Improvisation ). She had early appearances with the Wayfaring Strangers , a group that tries to combine jazz , klezmer , bluegrass and Celtic influences across styles based on American folk music .

In 2001 she founded Crooked Still with fellow students Corey DiMario (bass), Gregory Liszt (banjo) and Rushad Eggleston (cello) . In 2004, Hop High , the first album by the increasingly successful quartet, was released. With Crooked Still she released four studio and one live album until 2011. As a side project acted Sometymes Why , a female trio, along with Kristin Andreassen and Ruth Merenda that with the produced self-published 2005 album Sometimes Why debuted; she also worked with Eggleston in the Wild Band of Snee (which released the EP Playhouse of the Universe in 2006).

O'Donovan on the MerleFest music festival 2011

As a singer and composer, she was involved in the Grammy- winning Goat Rodeo Sessions (2012). In the same year she recorded the jazz album Be Still with the Dave Douglas Quintet .

After Crooked Still's (preliminary) farewell tour in 2011, Aoife O'Donovan started a solo career as a singer-songwriter . Her first solo album Fossils was released in the summer of 2013 , which she presented to a German audience as part of a small European tour in February 2014.

In 2014 the Punch Brothers asked O'Donovan, Sarah Jarosz and Sara Watkins ( Nickel Creek ) to rehearse a short set as an opener for their show. The trio then decided to go on tour together in 2015 under the name I'm with Her . In May 2015, Crossing Muddy Waters (Original John Hiatt ) and an a cappella cover version of Nina Simone's Be My Husband were released.

In 2015 Aoife O'Donovan accompanied Glen Hansard on his American tour. In January 2016, In the Magic Hour appeared as the successor to Fossils by Yep Roc.

In May 2017 she made a guest appearance at the Folkbaltica in Flensburg.

The trio I'm with Her went on the “American Acoustic Tour” with the Punch Brothers and Julian Lage in the summer of 2017 . In 2018, the band's debut album See You Around was released. The accompanying world tour also took her to Germany in May. As part of I'm with Her , she was in 2020 with a Grammy Award for the song Call My Name as the best American Roots Song excellent.

She has lived in New York in the Brooklyn district since 2009 . In June 2016 she married the cellist and conductor Eric Jacobsen .

Discography (selection)

Solo :

  • Blue Light , EP (2010)
  • Fossils (2013)
  • In the Magic Hour (2016)
  • Man in a Neon Coat: Live from Cambridge (2016)

Crooked Still :

Sometymes Why :

  • Sometimes Why (2005)
  • Your Heart Is a Glorious Machine (2009)

I'm with Her :

  • Crossing Muddy Waters (2015); with Sara Watkins and Sarah Jarosz
  • See You Around (2018)

Others :

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ David Carr: Snapshot Aoife O'Donovan. From Gowanus to Bonnaroo. In: The New York Times , May 31, 2013 (accessed September 26, 2013)
  2. ↑ Brian O'Donovan on WGBH (Boston Public Radio) ( Memento from February 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Singer-songwriter Aoife O'Donovan comes back to her roots in Cork. In: Irish Examiner . February 12, 2016 (accessed February 14, 2016)
  4. ^ Wayfaring Strangers find common ground. ( February 13, 2016 memento on the Internet Archive ) In: The Boston Globe . November 14, 2003
  5. ↑ Tour schedule on Tumblr.com
  6. ↑ Songs We Love: Aoife O'Donovan, 'Magic Hour'. Elena See for NPR Music, October 21, 2015 (accessed February 14, 2016)
  7. ↑ Review on americansongwriter.com, January 19, 2016 (accessed January 24, 2016)
  8. ↑ folkbaltica.de ( Memento from February 16, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ Debut album of "I'm with Her": Three-way cooperation instead of competition , Dlf-Kultur from February 21, 2018 (accessed on February 22, 2018)
  10. ↑ I'm With Her - the small, big supergroup is celebrating its only concert in Germany . Concert report by Christine Heise for countrymusicnews.de, May 8, 2018 (accessed August 26, 2018)
personal data
SURNAME O'Donovan, Aoife
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American singer and songwriter
DATE OF BIRTH November 18, 1982
PLACE OF BIRTH Newton , Massachusetts , USA