"I’ve always been surrounded by music since I was a child, I started studying piano when I was nine years old, but my first choral experience started when I was fifteen when I joined the choir where my father sang. Even if I had a classical education on piano, choral singing had a strong appeal to me, pushing me to arrange songs and write my own. I had the possibility to express myself in a new way, using the most beautiful instrument: the voice.

I discovered Michael McGlynn’s music by chance in a compilation of Celtic music in 1998 and it was a pivotal moment for me: I was blown away by the Anúna sound, a wave that filled my ears and my soul at the same time. I couldn’t wait to discover something else about Anúna and about such a peculiar composer. Since then my idea of choral singing changed. I longed for something I couldn’t find in Italy, so my passion for Irish music grew even more. I learned to play the uilleann pipes and tin whistles and I found my own way of using those sounds in my music.

I spent endless hours listening to the Anúna CDs I had found traveling in major Italian cities as the internet was still far from working as it works now. I transcribed scores by listening to them. How I met Anúna for the first time still steals me a smile. I joined the Anúna Summer School in 2018 as a gift for my 40th birthday. I was so excited to meet Michael McGlynn and I couldn’t wait to see and to hear Anúna live, to discover how they create that incredible sound that has been in my ears since 1998. I was in seventh heaven.

Many times I asked myself how Anúna do what they do, how Michael manages to express his music through singers. I felt so honoured to be able to listen to Lucy and Michael, their singing, their way of communicating and, even more, their way to express art. Only in that moment I was able to understand the deep meaning of singing, and not only choral singing, but singing in its deepest, most intimate and natural way.

I was even more blown away when I discovered that what I had been speculating about for 20 years, was something so simple and pure: the breath.

It is this huge power that connects singers in Anúna and is what connects singers with audiences, creating what I can only describe as “magic”. The Anúna Summer School was the most important experience of my life, not only as a musician but also as a human being. I discovered myself.

With that musical experience, I got even more than I expected - a deep connection with people that were on the same wavelength, I felt deeply connected to something that it is hard to explain. I couldn’t let go this opportunity, so I auditioned (thinking I would never ever be accepted) and to my wonder I suddenly was in Anúna. Since then, I can easily say that Anúna has changed me into a better expression of myself. What Michael gives you stays with you all the time and this is constantly changing my way of singing and composing. Even more, it has changed the way I teach students how to play an instrument or how to sing. As a choir director of two very different realities I felt the need to change my line of work, not an easy change to make but something I couldn’t deny anymore. I had to make things more spontaneous and natural.

Michael’s music is a way to live the reality that surrounds us, the nature and our connection with elements and feelings. Anúna are the voice of those tales, of those thoughts, they become colours and images. Our voices become colours on the palette of an incredible painter, connected by the breath and by something that sparkles inside our souls and that gives us this primal connection with each other which is so difficult to explain and yet so easy to reach.

Not a day goes by without Anúna, I find this “dimension” in every artistic expression of myself, it’s something that you discover within yourself and once you find it, you treasure it as you feel this deep meaning in it - a solace in dark moments and a light that guides you.