Anna Calvi Bio - Biography

Name Anna Calvi
Height
Naionality English
Date of Birth 24-September-1980
Place of Birth Twickenham, England, UK
Famous for Singing
Anna Calvi is an English musician who plays in the band of the same name. On 6 December 2010, Calvi was announced as a nominee for the BBC's Sound of 2011 poll. Her debut album Anna Calvi was released in the UK on 17 January 2011, where it debuted at number 40 on 23 January. The album was subsequently nominated for the prestigious Mercury Music Prize in 2011.

Calvi was also nominated for Best British Breakthrough at the 2012 BRIT Awards. Calvi originally intended to study art, but instead opted for a degree in music. She attended University of Southampton where she studied violin and guitar, graduating with honors with a Bachelor of Arts in Music in 2003. Singing, however, was not something that Calvi explored until reaching her mid-twenties. "I had a phobia about it until five years ago. I wouldn't sing in school or even in the shower. I had this emotional block about hearing my voice. So the guitar became my voice when I was a teenager, it was how I could express myself." Striving to find her own voice, Calvi said she locked herself in a room for long periods of time, singing along to records by Edith Piaf and Nina Simone. Calvi formed several bands including Cheap Hotel, which released one download-only single, New York, which did not chart. Calvi then went on to meet multi-instrumentalist Mally Harpaz and drummer Daniel Maiden-Wood, who now form her intimate band set-up.

At an early gig, Calvi caught the attention of Bill Ryder-Jones who urged Laurence Bell of Domino Records to sign her. Early support also came from renowned music legend Brian Eno, who heard about Calvi through a friend. He has since become her unofficial mentor describing her during a BBC 6 Music interview as, "the biggest thing since Patti Smith." In the autumn of 2009, Calvi recorded a series of filmed Attic Sessions that were uploaded onto YouTube including a cover of Leonard Cohen's Joan of Arc, Elvis Presley's Surrender, TV on the Radio's Wolf Like Me and David Bowie's Sound & Vision.

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