Anais Mitchell (usa)

The most engaging, and in some ways, most original artist currently working in the field of new American 'folk' music INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

Anaïs Mitchell is first and foremost a storyteller. As a Vermont-based singer-songwriter, Mitchell recorded for Ani Difranco's Righteous Babe Records for several years before starting her own Wilderland label in 2012. Among her recorded works are five full-length albums, including 2010's sensationally-reviewed Hadestown a folk opera based on the Orpheus myth and 2012's Young Man in America, which was described by the UK's Independent as 'an epic tale of American becoming' and for which she received a BBC Radio Two Folk Award nomination for Best Original Song.

Mitchell has headlined worldwide as well as supporting tours for Bon Iver, Ani Difranco, The Low Anthem (all of whom appear as guest singers on Hadestown), Richard Thompson, Josh Ritter and Punch Brothers. Her 2013 release, Child Ballads, a collaboration with Jefferson Hamer, is a collection of traditional Celtic and British Isles ballads. It won a 2014 BBC Radio Two Folk Award for Best Traditional Song, as well as finding itself on many 'best of' lists in international publications. In fall 2014, Mitchell releases 'xoa'; a fifteen track solo collection including re-recorded songs spanning her ten year career, as well as a few completely new and previously unrecorded songs. If there's a common thread in Mitchell's work from her earliest acoustic records, to the Hadestown opera, to this new chapter it's that she's as interested in the world around her as the one inside her. She has a way of tackling big themes with the same emotional intimacy most artists use to describe their inner lives. That's why, as one journalist put it, even in her most intimate moments, she never sounds like a confessional songwriter.

HADESTOWN, based on the acclaimed album, Anais and her collaborators have been working on the stage adaptation for ten years, and it will open on May 23rd 2016 at the New York Theatre Workshop.

Beautifully original, bristling with savage melancholy 4 THE DAILY TELEGRAPH