Anaïs Mitchell

Vermont-based singer and songwriter Anaïs Mitchell blends a sincere vocal approach reminiscent of Dolly Parton with introspective, narrative-driven compositions in the alt-folk vein. After issuing a self-released debut in 2002 titled The Song They Sang...When Rome Fell and then placing her first project with Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records in 2007 under the title The Brightness, she delivered her pivotal fourth album, Hadestown, in 2010. Conceived as a Depression-era American retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, the work later received a Broadway staging that premiered in 2019 and ultimately captured eight Tony Awards, among them Best Musical and Best Original Score. In 2020 she became a founding member of the indie-folk collective Bonny Light Horseman, and two years afterward she issued her eighth studio album, the self-titled Anaïs Mitchell.

Born in Vermont in 1981, Mitchell received her name from her father, a novelist and college professor, in tribute to the writer Anaïs Nin. Encouraged by outspoken songwriters such as DiFranco, Tori Amos, and Dar Williams, she began composing and performing while still in high school. After childhood journeys through the Middle East, Latin America, and Europe, she pursued studies in languages and international politics at Middlebury College in Vermont, and her debut album, The Song They Sang...When Rome Fell, appeared in 2002.

Waterbug Records brought out her sophomore effort, the Michael Chorney-produced Hymns for the Exiled, in 2004. DiFranco subsequently welcomed Mitchell to Righteous Babe, where the Chorney-helmed The Brightness emerged in 2007. The following year she issued the collaborative Country E.P. with folk singer Rachel Ries.

Mitchell’s 2010 full-length Hadestown originated from an earlier New England stage adaptation of the Orpheus and Eurydice tale, again with Chorney handling the orchestrations. The resulting concept recording cast Mitchell as Eurydice, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon as Orpheus, DiFranco as Persephone, and additional folk-rooted contributors including Greg Brown and the Low Anthem’s Ben Knox Miller. The widely praised release climbed to number nine on Billboard’s Americana/Folk Albums chart and also entered the Top 40 of the Heatseekers ranking.

While expanding the musical for larger venues, Mitchell kept writing and recording, issuing the socially conscious Young Man in America on Wilderland Records in 2012; that set reached number 13 on the Americana/folk chart. A collection of traditional ballads assembled with Jefferson Hamer, Child Ballads, followed on the same imprint in 2013 and peaked at number 20 on the folk chart. In 2014 she released her seventh studio album, xoa, which mixed new material with reinterpreted earlier songs, among them the opening track “Any Way the Wind Blows,” later incorporated into the revised Hadestown score.

After an off-Broadway debut in 2016 that yielded the cast album Hadestown: The Myth. The Musical., subsequent productions in Edmonton in 2017 and London in 2018, the show reached Broadway’s Walter Kerr Theatre in April 2019. The cast featured singer-songwriter Reeve Carney as Orpheus alongside Broadway veterans Eva Noblezada as Eurydice, Patrick Page as Hades, Amber Gray as Persephone, and André De Shields as Hermes. Nominated for 14 Tony Awards that season, the production secured eight victories, including Best Musical, Best Original Score for Mitchell, and Best Featured Actor for De Shields. The complete Broadway cast recording, issued by Sing It Again Records in July 2019 and running more than two hours, attained a Top Five position among independent albums.

In 2020 Mitchell formed the trio Bonny Light Horseman with Eric D. Johnson of Fruit Bats and the Shins and Josh Kaufman of the National and Hiss Golden Messenger; the group’s self-titled debut, fusing traditional British folk material with original songs, earned two Grammy nominations. Her return to original songwriting arrived in 2022 with the ten-track Anaïs Mitchell, her first such collection since Young Man in America, spotlighting the indie-folk single “Bright Star” and featuring contributions from Michael Lewis, JT Bates, Thomas Bartlett, Aaron Dessner, and Nico Muhly. The live document Hadestown: Live from London, captured at the Lyric Theatre in the West End, surfaced in 2024.