ALICIA EDELWEISS

ALICIA EDELWEISS

Alicia Edelweiss dances with her accordion and casts a spell over the audience with her remarkable vocal acrobatics. She is in fact one of the most interesting musicians in Austria’s musical landscape today” – ORF, Austria’s National TV

Following a barnstorming performance at Edinburgh Tradfest in April we’re delighted to welcome Alicia Edelweiss back to the Traverse. She is an Austro-British singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, actress and visual artist based in Vienna. She started her musical career as a teenage street musician, hitch-hiking all over Europe for two years. On her quest for freedom and travelling without any money, she pretty soon discovered her passion and talent for music – back then solely armed with a guitar.

Settling in Portugal for a while, she recorded her first EP I should have been overproduced (2013) three weeks after she began writing songs at all, due to a Portuguese friend she had just made that urged her to do so. The 7-track-EP was heavily influenced by the Anti-Folk movement in New York. She also began to play the accordion during her time in Portugal, which should become her trade-mark. Gradually getting bored by her existence as a hippy punk singer-songwriter, she decided to return to Vienna to explore new ways of performing and story-telling, and while doing so discovered her new love for the circus arts.

While performing a lot solo she was also part of nomadic folk-punk band Old Trees as the accordionist for their tours in 2015, and joined the band of austro-pop singer Voodoo Jürgens from 2016-2020.

In 2016 she released her home-recorded lo-fi debut album Mother, how could you – a sick tragic comedy in 10 acts. She toured solo all over Europe and created experimental solo performances like Komplett im Arsch – a tragic Anti-Opera (2016) or Ich bin eine Ballerina (2018) in which she combined music, dance and the circus arts. In 2018 a documentary was made about her called The Sound of Alicia Edelweiss which followed her concerts and performances for 1 1/2 years.

In 2019 her long-awaited first studio album was released: When I’m enlightened, everything will be better. The release was followed by numerous shows and festivals across Europe.

2022 she was the winner of the Hubert von Goisern-Kulturpreis for persistence and talent, and she is amongst the selected artists for the NASOM (The New Austrian Sound of Music) program 2023/24.

PREVIEW:

Tickets: £15
Date: Monday 11 December 2023
Doors open: 7:30pm | Music starts: 8pm
Location: Traverse Theatre Bar, 10 Cambridge Street, Edinburgh

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