Aoife O'Donovan

Aoife O'Donovan, an American singer-songwriter now residing in Brooklyn, first gained widespread recognition as the founder and lead vocalist of the string band Crooked Still. She also belongs to the female trios Sometymes Why and I'm with Her, and has performed on the Prairie Home Companion broadcast. Her extensive list of collaborators spans jazz trumpeter Dave Douglas, the Goat Rodeo Sessions project featuring Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile, as well as the Boston Pops Orchestra and the Kronos Quartet. Within the contemporary folk, bluegrass, and progressive Americana realms she has become a frequent session vocalist, appearing alongside Jerry Douglas, Sarah Jarosz, Darol Anger, and the Infamous Stringdusters.

Following two EPs she delivered her first solo album, Fossils, on Yep Roc in 2013. The next year at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival she joined Sara Watkins and Sarah Jarosz to create the touring group I'm with Her. Their debut recording, See You Around, appeared on Rounder in 2018 and earned a Grammy for Best American Roots Performance the following year. O'Donovan resumed solo work with the Joe Henry-produced Age of Apathy in 2022 and followed it two years later with All My Friends, a project shaped by the women's suffrage campaigns of the early twentieth century.

She spent her childhood in Newton, Massachusetts, where both parents played music and her father hosted a Celtic program on Boston radio. During high school she traveled to Ireland each summer to study traditional Celtic music and dance. She later enrolled at the New England Conservatory of Music, completing her degree in contemporary improvisation in 2003, and already harbored ambitions of making her own record with a short list of desired producers in mind.

O'Donovan helped establish Crooked Still in 2001. Two years afterward she joined the Wayfaring Strangers ensemble alongside Matt Glaser, Tony Trishka, Jamey Haddad, Jim Whitney, Andy Statman, and John McGann, sharing vocal duties with Tracy Bonham and Ruth Ungar. In 2005 she formed the “folk noir” trio Sometymes Why with Ungar and Kristin Andreassen, which eventually released two albums. After five studio albums, one live set, and extensive international touring, Crooked Still entered a temporary hiatus in 2011 to allow its members individual pursuits.

During the break O'Donovan fulfilled her long-standing goal by signing with Yep Roc and recording Fossils under Tucker Martine, the producer she had ranked highest while still in college; the album reached stores in June 2013. She supported it with nonstop headline club dates and festival appearances abroad while also contributing to Brooklyn Rider’s Almanac project. An impromptu performance with Sara Watkins and Sarah Jarosz at the 2014 Telluride Bluegrass Festival led to the formal launch of I'm with Her.

Following the passing of her ninety-three-year-old grandfather, O'Donovan spent ten days alone shaping new songs. Early in 2015 she returned to Martine’s Portland, Oregon studio to begin her second solo effort, much of which had never been played in public. Across three intensive sessions they constructed the record from scratch, drawing additional input from Jarosz, Sara Watkins, Gabriel Kahane, Thile, and Brooklyn Rider. The resulting In the Magic Hour appeared in January 2016. That summer she and Jarosz joined the house band assembled for A Prairie Home Companion when Chris Thile succeeded retiring host Garrison Keillor. In September she issued the live set Man in a Neon Coat: Live from Cambridge with Anthony da Costa on electric guitar and Steve Nistor on drums. After further touring the I'm with Her trio recorded See You Around for Rounder in 2018, securing another Grammy for Best American Roots Performance in 2019.

Back in 2015 O'Donovan, violinist-composer Jeremy Kittel, and conductor Teddy Abrams received a commission from Oregon’s Britt Music and Arts Festival. While researching the assignment she discovered the poems of Oregon poet laureate Peter Sears, which supplied the texts for the orchestral suite Bull Frogs Croon. Sears attended the premiere that year. Although he died in 2017, O'Donovan and Kittel continued the project, and in 2019 they captured the material with a string quartet of Kittel and Brittany Haas on violins, Mario Gotoh on viola, and Paul Kowert on bass. The resulting EP, co-produced by O'Donovan and Kittel, also contained new versions of “Lakes of Pontchartrain” and Hazel Dickens’s “Pretty Bird.” Bull Frogs Croon (And Other Songs) was released in March 2020. Later that year she guested on Not Our First Goat Rodeo by Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, and Edgar Meyer and on the Kronos Quartet’s Pete Seeger tribute Long Time Passing.

Her next solo album, Age of Apathy, arrived in January 2022 under Joe Henry’s production and featured Allison Russell, Madison Cunningham, bassist David Piltch, and drummer Jay Bellerose. It received multiple Grammy nominations that year, including Best Folk Album. Throughout 2023 she issued two companion sets—one of full-band sessions, the other solo—while preparing her fourth solo record, All My Friends. The project originated in a commission marking the centenary of the Nineteenth Amendment; drawing on the writings of suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt, O'Donovan composed the core songs and included a reading of Bob Dylan’s “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.”