Holly Kirby

About: Holly Kirby

Holly Kirby has been a gifted singer and musician and a creative musical composer from an early age. Her main instruments currently are the guitar, ukulele, piano and tin-whistle, although she has played others and hopes to learn more. She’s a natural and confident performer - she used that talent to great effect in a popular British TV show, appearing as Enya in front of an audience of millions, and earning congratulations from the great lady herself. Her work has also been commented on positively by other famous stars, including Alan Rickman (a particular favorite of hers!), and attracted a tweet from arch-twitterer (and film star) Ashton Kutcher!

Holly's YouTube channel, alpet07, is frequently one of the top music sites in the U.K. Her videos have been viewed over a million times, her channel main page over 150,000 times, and she has more than 10,000 subscribers who are notified of each new video she produces. On average, at every given second, there are now probably many dozens of people listening to Holly's music, and that number is rapidly increasing (especially as her songs are being played more and more on the radio).

Holly enjoys all sorts of music and is very open to new ideas and new sounds. In the last year much of her work has been an eclectic mix of Celtic, folk and pop music, to which she applies her own distinctive, clearly sung and often emotional sound. Holly is also a keen poet and artist, and many of her poems and songs have an almost interchangeable lyrical quality.

Holly especially enjoys performing music live, and as well as appearing on TV she has played her guitar and sang before crowds ranging in size from a couple of people while busking through to many hundreds in concert.

As well as music, Holly has a strong interest in English Literature and German, and briefly considered doing those subjects at Oxford University (as, amazingly, music was the weakest academically of her 3 'A' level subjects). Her particular speciality in English is the war poets (Wilfried Owen and Seigfred Sassoon) although she also greatly enjoyed the work of 19th century poets such as Wordsworth and Tennyson - a scene from one of Tennyson's poems is featured on her guitar.

Holly completed her final school exams in June 2009, and then took a musical gap year between school and university, having accepted a place studying Creative Music Technologyat the University of Surrey, starting Autumn 2010.

During her gap year Holly was very busy, performing frequent public and private gigs, and appeared at the Isle of Wight Festival, Bestival, FolkStation, the Wickham Festival, Ventnor Fringe, and many other events - you can see photos of some of these on the photos page. She was also involved in several musical and video collaboration projects, and was interviewed on BBC and other local radio stations.

In late May Holly launched her first album, A Woman You Don't Know, before a sell-out crowd . You can read a review of this great event in the Isle of Wight Gazette(page 40), and see see video clips of The Lady and The Past, Carey, Beautiful Deceit and My Little Ukulele Song from the album launch event. There are also many more news articles and reviews available on Holly's scrapbook page. To learn more about the album itself, (and watch Holly waving it about) visit Holly's Shop.

Throughout the last year Holly has continued to create and release new song videos on her popular alpet07YouTube site, which has achieved well over a million views and more than 10,000 subscribers.

Holly is also now a featured Luna Guitar Artist!

Holly intends to work hard at improving all her skills during the next year. She is especially keen on performing music live. Here's an example set list, containing a selection of cover and original songs, although Holly can perform many others. In her gigs she plays her guitar Lady and sings a mix of originals, modern songs, and old traditional favourites, and sometimes performs some ukulele songs which often go down very well.

Holly is currently based in the Isle of Wight, England, and at University in Surrey from late September 2010 onwards (during term times). If you would like Holly to play at your event in Southern England:

Contact: Holly Kirby on her Official Website

http://www.hollykirbymusic.com/fr_home.cfm