Aisha Burns

Aisha Burns works as a singer, songwriter, and violinist whose work includes membership in the post-rock group Balmorhea alongside her own understated indie folk rooted in guitar. Her recording career began in 2006 with contributions to projects by Alex Dupree, Sunset, and Adam Torres, followed by the 2013 appearance of her first solo album, Life in the Midwater.

Born in San Antonio, Texas, Burns took up the violin at ten. She moved to Austin in 2005 at eighteen intending to enroll in the University of Texas music program, yet completed a journalism degree instead. A classmate who heard her mention the instrument connected her with Alex Dupree and the Trapdoor Band, leading to a steady role on violin. In 2007 she became the violinist for Balmorhea, whose founders and multi-instrumentalists Rob Lowe and Michael Muller shaped the ensemble’s classically informed sound. The band issued four studio albums across the following five years, after which Burns issued her solo debut.

Life in the Midwater appeared on Western Vinyl in 2013 and centered on gentle, primarily acoustic indie folk with guitar as the principal instrument. Before Balmorhea’s 2017 album Clear Language, she contributed violin to releases by Adam Torres, Thor & Friends, and Alex Dupree. During this period she relocated to Beverly, Massachusetts, on the North Shore. Her second solo album, the self-produced Argonauta, arrived on Western Vinyl in 2018; shaped by the death of her mother and built with broader arrangements than the debut, it marked a further step in her recorded work.