Holly Kirby?
"A combination of Joni Mitchell and Enya with a quirky twist"
and, in the words of Bestival....
Isle of Wight singer songwriter Holly Kirby has been writing and singing her own songs pretty much as long as she can remember. A gifted musician her folk based songs are beautifully lilting, intelligently written tales of love and loss held together by her wondrously heartbreaking vocals.
Her influences include Joni Mitchell, Loreena McKennitt and Sandy Denny and it’s no exaggeration to say that this young lady is well on her way to becoming as accomplished and successful as any of her heroes.
and also, in more detail...
Holly Kirby has been a gifted singer and musician and a creative musical composer from an early age. Her main instruments currently are the guitar, ukulele, piano and tin-whistle, although she has played others and hopes to learn more. She’s a natural and confident performer - she used that talent to great effect in a popular British TV show, appearing as Enya in front of an audience of millions, and earning congratulations from the great lady herself. Her work has also been commented on positively by other famous stars, including Alan Rickman (a particular favourite of hers!), and attracted a tweet from arch-twitterer (and film star) Ashton Kutcher!
Holly's YouTube channel, alpet07, is frequently one of the top music sites in the U.K. Her videos have been viewed over a million times, her channel main page over 150,000 times, and she has over 9,000 subscribers who are notified of each new video she produces. On average, at every given second, there are now probably many dozens of people listening to Holly's music, and that number is rapidly increasing (especially as her songs are being played more and more on the radio).
Holly enjoys all sorts of music and is very open to new ideas and new sounds. In the last year much of her work has been an eclectic mix of Celtic, folk and pop music, to which she applies her own distinctive, clearly sung and often emotional sound. Holly is also a keen poet and artist, and many of her poems and songs have an almost interchangeable lyrical quality.
Holly especially enjoys performing music live, and as well as appearing on TV she has played her guitar and sang before crowds ranging in size from a couple of people while busking through to many hundreds in concert.
As well as music, Holly has a strong interest in English Literature and German, and considered doing those subjects at Oxford University (as, amazingly, music was the weakest academically of her 3 'A' level subjects). Her particular speciality in English is the war poets (Wilfried Owen and Seigfred Sassoon) although she also greatly enjoyed the work of 19th century poets such as Wordsworth and Tennyson - a scene from one of Tennyson's poems is featured on her guitar.
Holly completed her final school exams on June 18th 2009, and she is now taking a musical gap year between school and university. Holly has accepted a place studying Creative Music Technology at the University of Surrey, starting Autumn 2010, where, in the words of the course, she will learn from leading industry practitioners including Oscar, Emmy and BAFTA winners.
Holly has recently added impressive lyrical and video/musical production skills to her already shamelessly extensive talent list, and she intends to work hard at improving all her skills during the next year. She is especially keen on performing music live, and has played a lot of gigs and private functions already this year (see the news page for details and videos). Here's an example set list, containing a selection of cover and original songs, although Holly can perform many others. In her gigs she plays her guitar Lady and sings a mix of originals, modern songs, and old traditional favourites, and sometimes performs some ukulele songs which often go down very well.
Holly is currently based in the Isle of Wight, England, but will be at University in Surrey from late September 2010 onwards (at least during term times). If you would like Holly to play at your event in Southern England, contact her here!
Latest Update:
Holly has been very busy recently, performing frequent public and private gigs, and is booked to appear at the Isle of Wight Festival, Bestival, FolkStation, the Wickham Festival, Ventnor Fringe, and many other events this Spring and Summer - you can see photos of some of these on the photos page. She is also involved in several musical and video collaboration projects, and has been (or will be) interviewed on BBC and other local radio stations.
