About Me
Erika Kulnys connects deeply with her powerful voice, authenticity, innovative piano work, and infectious joy. A contemporary singer- songwriter, Erika works across genres to write heart-opening songs that have won much attention on her native soil in Canada. Her last album, Angel on the Road, won Music Nova Scotia’s 2015 Inspirational Recording of the Year, stayed in the Top Ten on local charts, was a finalist in CBC’s Searchlight Competition for Canada’s best new artist and received international airplay. In 2014 Erika was a finalist for Best Female Artist in the International Acoustic Music Awards for her song, Had to Come Home.
Erika’s sixth studio release, Rise Up, is a social justice-themed album, recorded at Signature Sounds by Mark Thayer (James Taylor, Josh Ritter, Richard Shindell) and featuring musicians Dave Mattacks (Paul McCartney), Laurie MacAllister (Red Molly) and Jim Henry (Mary Chapin-Carpenter) to name a few. Rise Up travels through folk-pop, Americana, and rock to explore the depths of human love and suffering, and calls us to unite globally for peace and equality. Throughout Erika’s songs reflect universal human experienceswithpassionandacutehonesty,whilethealbum’s production uses the many colours of strings, dobro, percussion, and harmonies to create its own living landscape of sound and story.
Though her roots grow deep in story-telling folk traditions, Erika is also a classically trained composer and a poet. Erika grew up in Nova Scotia singing in choirs and went on to study music composition, piano, and creative writing at the United World College (NM), Oberlin College and Conservatory (OH), winning a post-graduate Watson Fellowship to participate in groups working for social change through music in Ireland, Venezuela, Jamaica, Brazil and India. She performed with revolutionary bands throughout Venezuela’s Andes, collaborated with Battakare, an ensemble of youth in Sao Paolo who create and perform samba-influenced hip hop, and studied folk music’s influence on the peace movement in Northern Ireland.
This year Erika is a headliner at Copenhagen Pride’s Under the Rainbow concert and the Copenhagen Songwriter’s Festival. She tours Rise Up through Denmark, Germany, Ireland and England this fall, through the northeast of Canada and the US in October-November, in Cuba in January/February 2017, and across the US and Canada from March-June.
My Interests
Peace, Justice, Immigration, Open Borders, Queer Stories, Equality, Freedom, Love, Spirituality, Nature, Healing
My Audio
My Video
My Links
https://erikakulnys.bandcamp.comhttp://www.reverbnation.com/erikakulnys
https://soundcloud.com/erika-kulnys
https://www.facebook.com/erikakulnysmusic/
