Kirsty Almeida

Kirsty Almeida is a UK-based singer-songwriter who has released three albums, with the fourth, Moonbird, due for release 02.02.2020. Her influences of broad, including folk, pop and jazz but strongly and uniquely shaped by her own global heritage. Her father worked internationally and she grew up in the Philippines, Brunei, Venezuela, the US and Gibraltar. There is a particularly strong latin inflection to her work, an aspect she has brought to her work in the field of jazz.

Born in Dunfermline, Scotland, to a Scottish mother and a Gibraltarian father whose work in International Project Management took him around the world, Kirsty Almeida began her musical life playing violin in the Scottish Youth Orchestra and backed Evelyn Glennie with the Orchestra. She sang from a very young age when she performed the Latin mass through the church and went on to win local children's talent shows playing her violin and singing.

At the age of 9 she moved to Chicago with her family and attended school and orchestra there. At the age of 11, Kirsty and her family moved to Gibraltar where she joined the Gibraltar Orchestra and also began singing on bigger stages.

When she was 17, she moved to the UK to study A-Levels at at Ashbourne College in Kensington in a year then continued on to study Art & Design Foundation at Middlesex University. She says: ‘When I first came to the UK, I came on my own and when I look at 17-year-olds now I think “whaaat!” I went to London and I started studying and began working and just got really excited by it because I’d never been to England before, so it was a really thrilling time for me.’

She then moved to Yorkshire to sit a degree in music, achieving a BA in Popular Music Studies under the guidance of Dr Geraldine Connor at Bretton Hall, a College of the University of Leeds, in 2000.

While studying at Bretton, a leading liberal arts and performance institution, she became a professional performer and taught and led the chorus for Dr Geraldine Connor's acclaimed musical production Carnival Messiah, an ambitious marriage of Handel’s oratorio and the sounds and styles of the Caribbean – reggae, calypso, soca and sound systems.

The show was performed for the Queen at the Commonwealth Institute and sold out two 6-week runs at West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds before touring Trinidad & Tobago for another sell-out 6-week run.

During this time, Almeida was also a backing singer for Liz McClarnon and Natasha Hamilton for leading British girl group Atomic Kitten and flew to Moscow with Natasha Hamilton to perform for the G8 and 38,000 people in 2006. Kirsty also sang at Natasha Hamilton's wedding.

After 3 years of working on the show and performing with 9-piece Latin band Descarga and writing for and recording their album Llanita, Kirsty was chosen by Serious, the London-based talent agency, for developmental award Take Five. Almeida took this opportunity to write a solo album.

Within a few months of her songwriting retreat she signed to manager Mark Denby and together they embarked on a major record deal with Decca Records, Universal, signed by A&R Tom Lewis.

Her debut album for Decca, Pure Blue Green, was released in 2010, to strong critical reaction.

It was recorded at the Arc Studios, owned by Terry Britton, in London, and produced by the legendary Youth, founding member and bassist of the band Killing Joke. John Ellis was both multi-instrumentalist and assistant producer on the album and Kirsty Almeida herself had a co-producing credit.

She recalls that Decca encouraged a process she describes as ‘speed producing’ and the results were very satisfying. Almeida comments: ‘My A&R man said I would just “know” when I met the right producer and I definitely had a strong feeling Youth was the right one. Compared to Youth, all the other producers seemed very safe.

'With Youth, we found a common love of song. I felt like I really wanted to play my songs for him; I wanted him to be proud of my songs. I wanted to impress him. Which made me feel he was the right person. He was perfect for getting the right vocal out of me'

A noted track on a richly diverse collection of songs was ‘Spider’, re-mixed by DJ Mr Scruff.

Two EPs for Decca from film soundtracks followed – Albatross (2011), which featured four original songs linked to a movie release of the same name, and Patagonia (2011), a two-song set.

After departing the major label and setting out on a new independent course, Almeida recorded and released the 2012 album Wintersongs. Recorded at Limefield Studios in Middleton, Greater Manchester, it came out on the singer’s self-established label All Made Up.

Among the new songs was the track ‘Cold Lonely Blue' that gave a clue to the composer’s state of mind at time. She states: ‘It was actually a song inspired by Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). I wanted to make a warm album about the festive season - something you could cuddle up to too. “Cold Lonely Blue” was a song about the moments in the belly of the dark winter months where it seems it’s never going to end. That also felt important to bring to a Winter’s album.’

Having regained ownership of the Pure Green Blue recordings, in 2014, she compiled an artist re-mix of the whole album and released it under the title Déjàvoodu, again on the All Made Up imprint.

In 2014, Kirsty Almeida put her musical career on hold to give birth to her son and consequentially heal from PTSD and post-natal depression, which saw her leave the stage for 5 years, but not before she had recorded a number of songs which would lie dormant for some significant time. During this time Kirsty took on a major project to revive an abandoned mill in the centre of Manchester as an arts and wellness centre, The Wonder Inn.

These dormant compositions form a significant part of the new album Moonbird, to be released in February 2020 on All Made Up. There are also several more recent songs – ‘Dance with Me', ‘Into the Light' and ‘I'm Going to Love You' among them.

The production is jointly overseen by Kirsty Almeida and bass player Matt Owens. She remarks: ‘The album feels very much like a bridge from my old life into my new one.'

Pre-release press responses have been positive and her absence from the scene has actually helped to generate media interest as she returns to active performer.

Commenting on Moonbird, rock critic Simon Warner says: ‘The new record displays an eclectic richness but also an artistic unity because, throughout, the production, mixed supremely by Grammy award-winning Jerry Boys, is understated and never crowds out the principal heartbeat of the songs – Almeida’s utterly distinctive voice.’

• Kirsty Almeida Official Website