PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS

As a vehicle for pianist and songwriter, Ida Nilsen, Great Aunt Ida has existed in various shapes and places since 2003, beginning and returning to Vancouver, BC. Influenced by a variety of genres but rooted in the popular song, Nilsen's writing has been called “intimate and honest”, “warm and spare,” bordering on misanthropic, and “somehow unlike any other girl/piano combo.” An active member of Vancouver’s music scene in the late 90s and 2000s, Nilsen was also a member of acclaimed “post-rock” group The Beans, alt-country Radiogram, experimental all-improv group Cunt, The Gay, The Buttless Chaps, and the Toronto-based Violet Archers. Great Aunt Ida released four albums between 2005 and 2021 with the support of several Canadian arts funding bodies: Our Fall (2005 Hive-fi), How They Fly (2006 Northern Electric), Nuclearize Me (2011 Zunior), and Unsayable (2021 Dead House Plant). In the 2000s, Great Aunt Ida had CBC and college radio hits with Macarena and We Say No, co-wrote a song with The Waterboys, and toured Canada, the USA, and Europe, opening for Sarah Harmer, The Weakerthans, and The Rheostatics, among others.

Returning to the music world after 4 years in architecture school, Great Aunt Ida's new material reflects on grief, change, connection, and the spaces that hold feelings. The sound of your childhood doorbell meets reaching for the high notes at karaoke. A new single, “Out of Your Light,” recorded with producer and long-time collaborator Jonathan Anderson (Andy Shauf, Aiden Knight) was released on March 31, shortly before a tour of Ontario and Quebec. A Vancouver International Jazz Fest performance, a July tour of Gulf and Vancouver Islands, and a monthly residency at the WISE Club round up Ida’s plans for the summer.