Ana Silvera

She has performed and recorded with a number of notable artists including Imogen Heap, Olivia Chaney, Jim Moray, Bill Laurance, Jasper Høiby, Alan Hampton, Maya Youssef, Laura Moody, Yo Zushi, Mara Carlyle, Josephine Stephenson, Daughter, Danish violinist Bjarke Falgren, Hungarian poet George Szirtes and British composers Emily Hall and Max de Wardener.

The album was well-received: Arwa Haider of METRO wrote, "there's both a lavish, vivid imagination and an intense intimacy at play in the music of Ana Silvera... altogether these are haunting, grown-up fairytales"[9] and The Word described The Aviary as a collection of "dark and delicious torchsongs" and featured track 10, 'Coronation Dance' on their covermount CD.

[11] The Fabulist’ was recorded with producer and multi-instrumentalist Gerry Diver and features collaborators such as double bassist Jasper Høiby (Phronesis, Planet B) and LA-based singer-songwriter Alan Hampton (Fiona Apple, Andrew Bird) among others.

The album title, meaning ‘teller of fables’, speaks to Ana’s love of story-telling, with the songs both drawing on the lives of “imagined others” as well as plumbing the depths of her own emotional experiences.

‘Ghosts’, for instance, describes Ana’s witnessing of her teenage brother’s descent into psychosis over the course of a sweltering London summer: “You were dumbstruck by the ghosts / who waltzed your body down the hall”; ‘Red Balloon’ describes the dizzying, disorienting pull of a forbidden yet magnetic attraction replete with off-kilter drums, soaring violins and the tender swells of Adrian Lever’s guitar pedals; and ‘Early Frost’, a duet with Alan Hampton, tells the story of a couple living a seemingly picture-perfect life – marriage, a house, a perfectly tended garden – but “like a hidden fault on an iced-up lake / it’s the smallest things that can make it break”.

Silvera says, "I wrote ‘Oracles’ in a state of absolute urgency and emergency – it felt like I had been buried in the ground myself, and writing this music was a small pocket of air, my chance to breathe again".

[15] Following the success of "Oracles" at the Roundhouse, Silvera was commissioned as part of the venue's REVERB festival to compose an original work for the Estonian Television Girls Choir, conducted by Aarne Saluveer.

Critic Igor Toronyi-Lalic of The Arts Desk described the piece (alongside Oracles) as "two stunning folkloric sages" and wrote "Silvera's voice, which has a Björk-like spontaneity - an ability to be gritty and fragile one minute, warm, rich and ripe the next - bounced beautifully off the chamber ensemble (cello, violin, piano and percussion) and the glassy choir".

[17] It premiered on 30 October 2014 at the Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House and starred soloist Olivia Cowley as the main character, replacing principal ballerina Lauren Cuthbertson who was injured shortly before the show.

It was described as "a haunting and ethereal theatrical experience depicted with beautiful sensitivity the onset of psychotic illness in a young woman" by The BMJ and The Arts Desk wrote: "its through-composed score by Ana Silvera, who also takes a performing role as a singer is attractively varied, constantly engaging".

[18] Silvera was commissioned to compose a new work for herself, qanun player Maya Youssef and cellist/vocalist Laura Moody, to be recorded at the BBC's Maida Vale Studios.The resulting piece was entitled 'Greenwich Pier'.

In a review of the release, Richard Foster of The Quietus wrote: "[Ana Silvera's] 'Greenwich Pier' [is] a wonderful piece of modern folk... its deftness and surety of touch means it’s damned pleasing".

[19] In February 2020, Silvera was asked to compose a song for BBC Radio 3's spoken word show, The Verb, inspired by the new anthology "The Heart of A Stranger" edited by poet André Nafis-Sahely.

In 2016, Silvera was invited by BAFTA award-winning filmmaker Sheila Hayman to work with six members of the Write to Life group that is part of the UK-wide Freedom from Torture organisation.

Over a period of months, Silvera and the group devised sketches of lyrics and tunes for the show, sometimes drawing on traditional music from their homelands, but most of the time creating original songs which related to different aspects of their past and present lives.