Folkadelphia Session: Olivia Chaney

Photo courtesy of the artist.
Olivia Chaney’s music can be described as removed from time. The English songwriter and balladeer distills the essence – the blood, sweat, and tears, the love, life, and death from the songs she performs.
Her performance selection is culled from varied writers, eras, traditions, and countries, but whomever, wherever, or whenever they are originally from, Chaney truly makes the words and the melodies her own. 17th-century Baroque composer Henry Purcell’s “There’s Not a Swain” sits alongside contemporary avant-folksinger Alasdair Roberts’ “Waxwing,” but to the listener, it is Chaney, with her expressive and powerful singing, who imbues the stories with rich life and drama, commanding enraptured attention. Meet the new torchbearer of the British folk tradition: Olivia Chaney.