Ontario - Acoustic, Folk, Roots
Lynn Miles
This JUNO winner (Best Roots and Traditional Album) has been an audience favorite, gracing the Mariposa stage every few years with an offering of wonderful new material. The New York Times and Billboard have both sung her praises, and she is renowned for her fine fingerstyle guitar. Lynn’s music is subtle, lyrical and tender, often with more than a trace of melancholy. For a while, she served as a voice teacher at the Ottawa Folklore Center, teaching many students including a then fourteen year old Alanis Morrisette.
Lynn Miles is appearing in
Mariposa Kitchen Party Friday at 7:30pm
Concert Saturday at 2:30pm
Old, New Borrowed, Blue Sunday at 12:15pm
Unique Folkies Sunday at 4:00pm
Born outside Montreal in Sweetsburg, Quebec, Lynn Miles grew up in a musical home. Her father played the harmonica and listened to his jazz collection while her mother was a lover of both opera and country music.
Miles’ mother recalled once that she knew when Lynn had finally fallen asleep in her crib: Lynn stopped singing.
During her elementary school years, Miles learned guitar, violin, flute and piano. She began performing in public at around the age of sixteen and when she was in her early twenties she studied with an opera singer to strengthen her voice and enrolled for a time at Carleton University in Ottawa where she studied classical music history and theory.
Years later, Miles put this training to good use while serving as a voice teacher at the Ottawa Folklore Center. While at the center, she taught voice to many students including a then fourteen-year-old Alanis Morrisette.
In a career that has seen her move from Ottawa to Nashville to Los Angeles and back to Ottawa, and release albums as varied as the slick Night in a Strange Town and the stark Unravel, Miles has consistently been unflinching in putting it all out there: the unbridled ecstasy of new-found love, the fragile process of sweeping up the pieces when it breaks.
The accolades, meanwhile, continue to pour in. Her 1996 album, Slightly Haunted, was a Billboard Top 10 Pick of the Year. Unravel (released 2001) was praised by critics – All Music Guide describing it as "sounding as if it's been produced by Daniel Lanois in an Appalichian town" and "a diamond in the rough." Canadian folk-music icon Valdy once said, "I'm sorry for all the heartache she has to go through in order to get those juices going, but, yeah, she's marvelous." The New York Times may have said it best: "Lynn Miles makes being forlorn sound like a state of grace."