Biography-- where I do that odd thing that artists do, and write about myself in the third person. Behold!
Glenna Garramone is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist based in Victoria, BC, Canada, equally at home as a solo artist and in collaboration with a wide range of performers. Highlights include mainstage performances at Telluride Bluegrass Festival, the Vancouver Folk Festival, and Rifflandia, as a member of the band Shane Koyczan and the Short Story Long (on keyboard and vocals), with whom she co-wrote for their most recent album, Debris (featuring guest Ani DiFranco).
With a style somewhere between Keith Jarrett and Joni Mitchell, Glenna Garramone's songwriting earned her Grand prize in the Artswells Songwriting Contest in 2010, and the award-winning song "Bear Scat" was featured on CBC Radio's North By Northwest with Sheryl MacKay. Inspired by the geography, inhabitants, and spirit of the places she has lived, from Nunavut to Hawaii, Glenna Garramone crafts "raw, emotional, and utterly captivating" songs (John Threlfall, Monday Magazine), using anything from piano, to guitar, to her tap shoes.
Her fusion of talent, creativity, and craft have won Garramone invitations to a wide variety of venues; from the main stage of Victoria's Folk Fest, to the BC Festival of the Arts, and the Victoria Independent Music Awards. Her studio debut, Seasky-Starsong, charted at #2 on the folk charts in Victoria, BC. Recorded in a solar-powered yurt on Molokai'i, Hawaii, her latest album, Thank You Half Moon captures the intimacy and warmth of Garramone's live performances. In 2012 and 2013, Glenna Garramone was an official onboard entertainer with Via Rail on trains between Vancouver and Halifax. In 2004 she was invited to tour the West Coast of the USA between Seattle and L.A., adding a musical and tap dancing element to The Perpetual Motion Roadshow, in which she played and sang original songs.
Glenna holds a BFA in Writing from the University of Victoria, with a major in Poetry. In 2011 she graduated from the Community Choir Leadership Training Program, which prepared her to guide others in singing together, and to "embody the idea that singing is our birthright." When she's not on the road, Glenna resides in Victoria, where she facilitates, directs, and arranges songs for a non-auditioned indie-pop-rock choir, The Pandora Chorus.