Maz O’Connor
Friday 18th August 2023
Described by The Observer as ‘a highly individual singer-songwriter’, Maz O’Connor is a truly unique artist. Known for her haunting, emotive vocals and poetic lyricism, her songs are most often short stories inspired by her love of literature, folklore and mythology. Her Irish roots, she suspects, inform her love of darker tales—those of heartbreak, longing and loss.
She wrote her first song aged four, whilst making a ‘radio show’ with a cassette player and her brothers, and grew up singing old folk songs in her local Cumbrian venues. As a teenager, the songs of Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell inspired her to learn the guitar, while Regina Spektor inspired her to write her first songs on the piano.
Winning a BBC Performing Arts Fund Fellowship in 2014 (once won by Adele) brought Maz to wider attention, and later that year she was nominated for a BBC Folk Award for her first album, ‘This Willowed Light’. Maz has since released 3 further albums, toured extensively, played live sessions on BBC Radio 2 and 3, and appeared at major UK festivals, including Glastonbury. In 2021, she won the Drake YolanDa Award, supported by YolanDa Brown. Her latest album, ‘What I Wanted’ (May 2022), has been widely praised, and called ‘an excellent thing’ by Mark Radcliffe of BBC 6 Music and BBC Radio 2.
“I’m interested in connection,” she says, “that’s what music is to me. Creating a moment between myself and an audience member, one that’s intimate and real. I’m always seeking that.”
“BBC Performing Arts Fellowship graduate Maz O’Connor is a real find, fusing influences from the past (Joni Mitchell) with those of the present (Bon Iver) to concoct a dazzling array of part electric, part-acoustically crafted folk that occasionally borders on the experimental.” – Drowned in Sound
