Ana Silvera

Ana Silvera is an English singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and composer.

Silvera's solo music can be characterized as folk in style, but draws on diverse genres including jazz, pop and contemporary classical.

As a composer, she has been commissioned to write work for ballet, choir, instrumental ensemble and theatre including for Concerto Caledonia, Estonian Television Girls Choir and Royal Ballet.

Her lyrics often draw inspiration from literature, poetry and folklore.

To date, as a solo artist Silvera has released two studio albums, "The Aviary" (2012), "The Fabulist" (2022) and a live album, "Oracles" (2018), which was listed on The Guardian Critics Pick List, and three EPs: "Arcana - A Winter EP" (2017), "Light, Console Me" (2020), which features Gambian kora player Sefo Kanuteh, and "Gift" (2021).

She has performed and recorded with a number of notable artists including Imogen Heap, Olivia Chaney, Jim Moray, Bill Laurance, Jasper Høiby, Alan Hampton, Maya Youssef, Laura Moody, Yo Zushi, Mara Carlyle, Josephine Stephenson, Daughter, Danish violinist Bjarke Falgren, Hungarian poet George Szirtes and British composers Emily Hall and Max de Wardener.

She is also an interpreter of traditional Ladino song and traces her lineage back to Sephardi Jews who escaped Iberia as refugees during the religious conquests of the 1500s, and later settled in the Ottoman Empire.

She has released modern interpretations of Ladino music under the name Yja as part of a duo with cellist Francesca Ter-Berg.

Ana Silvera's debut album, The Aviary, was in March 2012.The Aviary was produced by Ray Singer (Peter Sarstedt) and Brad Albetta (Martha Wainwright, Teddy Thompson) and violinist/arranger Maxim Moston (Antony & the Johnsons, Rufus Wainwright).

The album was well-received: Arwa Haider of METRO wrote, "there's both a lavish, vivid imagination and an intense intimacy at play in the music of Ana Silvera... altogether these are haunting, grown-up fairytales" and The Word described The Aviary as a collection of "dark and delicious torchsongs" and featured track 10, 'Coronation Dance' on their covermount CD.

The Aviary was released as a CD and digital download on KMC Records.

In 2015, Silvera recorded her seven part song-cycle in a series of live recordings over three nights.

The performance featuring noted musicians such as pianist Bill Laurance (of Snarky Puppy) double bassist Jasper Høiby of Phronesis and singer/composer Josephine Stephenson.

In 2017, Silvera released a collection of original and traditional winter songs featuring Danish musicians Jasper Høiby (bass), Bjarke Falgren (strings), Jacob Smedegaard (drums), Signe Trylle (vox) and British musician Adrian Lever (Bulgarian tambura).

It is available as a digital download and 500 limited edition CDs were also released.

The EP was released on Mirabeau Recordings, Silvera's own imprint.

Silvera was commissioned by arts organisation Arts La'Olam to compose a piece reflecting on the Mourner's Kaddish, as part of a COVID-19 legacy commission funded by Arts Council England.

The resulting three-song piece, featuring kora player Sefo Kanuteh, is composed of three movements: 'Departing', 'Awaiting', 'Mourning'.

The piece was released on Mirabeau Recordings, Silvera's own imprint.

"Gift" is a three-song release of songs composed or arranged on harmonium.

Silvera's recordings have, as of 2018, been added to the Sound Archive at the British Library.

The song cycle was recorded at Roundhouse Studio Theatre and was released as vinyl, CD and digital download in July 2018 on Gearbox Records.

The release was listed on The Guardian Critics Pick List (selected by journalist Charlotte Richardson Andrews) the same year, and was praised by writer Alex Preston on BBC Radio 4's Saturday Review as being "some of the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard...intelligent, lyrically complex and interesting".

The Fabulist’ was recorded with producer and multi-instrumentalist Gerry Diver and features collaborators such as double bassist Jasper Høiby (Phronesis, Planet B) and LA-based singer-songwriter Alan Hampton (Fiona Apple, Andrew Bird) among others.

The album title, meaning ‘teller of fables’, speaks to Ana’s love of story-telling, with the songs both drawing on the lives of “imagined others” as well as plumbing the depths of her own emotional experiences.

‘Ghosts’, for instance, describes Ana’s witnessing of her teenage brother’s descent into psychosis over the course of a sweltering London summer: “You were dumbstruck by the ghosts / who waltzed your body down the hall”; ‘Red Balloon’ describes the dizzying, disorienting pull of a forbidden yet magnetic attraction replete with off-kilter drums, soaring violins and the tender swells of Adrian Lever’s guitar pedals; and ‘Early Frost’, a duet with Alan Hampton, tells the story of a couple living a seemingly picture-perfect life – marriage, a house, a perfectly tended garden – but “like a hidden fault on an iced-up lake / it’s the smallest things that can make it break”.

The album was released to positive reviews; it was selected as a New and Notable release by Bandcamp Editorial who said: "hushed and riveting, the new LP from Ana Silvera centers her expressive voice against quietly glowing guitars” and Folk Radio UK who described it as '"extraordinary... Silvera has an uncanny ability to combine discomfort with beauty, strangeness with simplicity".

As of 2020, Silvera holds both British and Portuguese nationality, due to right of return laws.

Silvera grew up in Crouch End, London.

At the age of 12, she successfully auditioned for a solo role in the Engelbert Humperdinck opera Königskinder in an English National Opera production conducted by Mark Elder and directed by David Pountney.

The performance of the production was also broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

Following this role, she was selected to sing as part of the children's chorus in Richard Strauss' opera, Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Royal Opera House.

Silvera was subsequently awarded a scholarship to study voice and piano at junior Guildhall School of Music where she studied under David Joyner.

She attended South Hampstead High School and is an alumnus of University College London.

The EP features a re-recorded version of 'Exile', a song commissioned by BBC Radio 3's The Verb in 2020.

This song is inspired by Iranian-American poet Sholeh Wolpé's work, 'The World Grows Blackthorn Walls'.

"Gift" was released on Mirabeau Recordings, Silvera's own imprint.

Oracles was originally commissioned by Marcus Davey, the artistic director of London's Roundhouse venue, as a choral piece to be performed with Roundhouse Experimental Choir.

The piece was written as a response to the recent death of Silvera's brother, Daniel, in a psychiatric care home.

Silvera says, "I wrote ‘Oracles’ in a state of absolute urgency and emergency – it felt like I had been buried in the ground myself, and writing this music was a small pocket of air, my chance to breathe again".