EXCLUSIVE! ‘Out Of Stone’ by Ari & Mia

Ari & Mia: sisters doing it for themselves

This week’s Thursday exclusive is a real treat, as folk duo Ari & Mia present their debut album in full

his week’s Thursday exclusive is landing a little later in the day than normal, but hopefully you’ll forgive us when you realise that we’re not just bringing you an exclusive track this week… not just the first look at a video… but the world premiere of an entire album. And what an album it is, too!

Sisters Ari and Mia Friedman have been making music together since they were eight and three years old respectively, and both are graduates of Boston’s famous New England Conservatory. With Ari on cello, Mia on guitar/banjo/violin and the pair sharing vocal duties, over the years they’ve moved on from traditional Irish/Scottish fiddle music to a sound that blends American folk and baroque influences, which they describe as “chamber folk”. They’ve gigged right across the USA, appeared at New Bedford Folk Festival, opened for leading US folkie Cheryl Wheeler and won a John Lennon Songwriting Award… and released two albums, Unruly Heart and Land On Shore.

And now album number three, Out Of Stone, is ready to drop on 16 July… and you get to hear it here first. “Ideas for this album began percolating around January 2014 when we made the decision to start touring as a duo,” they tell us. “This prompted an entire winter of weekly rehearsals devoted to developing a new repertoire of original ‘chamber folk’ music, music that used as many textures as are available within our combination of strings and voices.”

With interest in more traditional music styles high right now, and given the calibre of the songwriting, singing and musicianship showcased here, we can see no reason why Out Of Stone shouldn’t be the long-player that catapults Ari & Mia to much greater things… particularly when there’s just enough of a modern slant to draw in fans of the likes of Joni Mitchell or Suzanne Vega, too. But don’t take our word for it… take a listen below!

Like what you hear? Then find Ari & Mia on Soundcloud, on Facebook, on YouTube or at their own website.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.