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Folk Bands and Artists

Mae Kartäuser

http://www.themidnightfairground.co.uk/biography

Mae is a British songwriter with a rich, acrobatic voice and a distinctive circusesque piano style. Raised in a musical family and one of seven children, she began learning piano, violin and singing as a child, before going on to study at Dartington College of Arts and California Institute of the Arts in LA. Her training began classically, but quickly spread to music spanning Eastern Europe, Bulgaria, Africa, North India and Java as well as in jazz, folk and more popular modern styles.

Under the self pinned folk-pop-circus genre, her songs are populated by wayward characters both human and animal and leap playfully between story and fantasy and hard social questions, asking for what is faithful in a world of mirrors. Inspired by the likes of Lhasa de Sela, The Do, Zulya, Kate Bush, Regina Spektor, Joni Mitchell and Joanna Newsom.

Song and music are coupled with a distinctive twist of humour and meandering, eccentrically-woven anecdotes (on topics as wide as resident ladybirds, the violent homeless, and literature for 8-10-year-olds). Some shows come wildly embellished, dressed with theatrics and audience participation to create another world in which the boundaries of performer and spectator begin to blur. Whether alone, or surrounded by a troupe of musicians, dancers, acrobats or clowns, Mae has audiences nestled playfully in the palm of her hand, as she strokes each one of them gently on the head, grinning like a badly behaved child in the chocolate aisle.
Since 2008, Mae has been touring professionally in Europe and America both solo, in bands and also with contemporary circus, theatre and spoken word. This has also included performing live on BBC One for The One Show in 2017, harnessed off the roof of BBC Television studios with aerial circus stunts men The Flying Frenchies, two times performing at Glastonbury festival, and supporting James Brown saxophonist Peewee Ellis in funk/ dance band The Sungroove Messengers. She has also done significant aerial performances; shooting across a zipwire in Chamonix Mont Blanc, dangling from the side of an old English fire engine and as well as flying tandem over the French alps in a paraglider.

As well as releasing three albums of her own she has performed and recorded regularly in several other projects. She continues to tour extensively in Europe and collaborate with contemporary aerial circus companies in France and Sweden (9.81, The Flying Frenchies, Cirkus Nikolajeff) and her music appears on the infamous film “Petit Bus Rouge”.

Genre: Alt Folk,Singer-songwriter