Louisa Bennion

Originally from rural Utah, Louisa Bennion fell in with the wrong crowd and began playing Irish traditional music during her university years in Ithaca, New York. She studied concertina with Noel Hill, Micheál O Raghallaigh, Tim Collins, and Michael Rooney, and during the six years spent living in New York City she learned as much as possible from the wealth of Irish musicians who live in and pass through that great crossroads. She was particularly influenced by Patrick Ourceau and the other regulars at the Mona's session, who were in turn drawing on the strong presence in New York of an older generation of musician immigrants from Clare and East Galway. For the past decade Louisa has lived in France, first in the Alpes of Haute-Provence and now in northern Brittany. She is a regular teacher at the Celticimes festival in the Savoie and plays in duo with uilleann piper Loïc Bléjean. Louisa also works as a writer, freelance editor, and rafting guide.