A special performance for our 2022 online festival! Watch the performance anytime on festival day by following this link: https://youtu.be/Lo7qg2-yRYA
Aireene will be performing guitar, ukulele and vocals.
Aireene Espiritu plays a mix of stompin’, swayin’ and timeless Americana reminiscent of front porch storytelling, of ghosts and the living, times of laughter and tears. She is a singer/songwriter based in Oakland, CA with over 25 years experience covering various genres from folk, blues, gospel, rhythm and blues to world music. Aireene was a soloist with the Glide Ensemble in San Francisco, has toured internationally and across the country, playing intimate venues such as Freight & Salvage to festivals such as Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival.
In 2016, Espiritu was added to the roster of artists under Little Village Foundation, a non-profit label founded by venerable blues keyboardist Jim Pugh (Robert Cray, Etta James, B.B. King, John Lee Hooker) and released an album that was part tribute to rhythm & blues artist, Sugar Pie DeSanto and part Filipino and American folk songs. The album has received positive recognition and reviews from KQED’s The California Report, San Francisco Chronicle, Living Blues, and No Depression magazines. In All About Jazz, it received a 4.5 out of 5 stars review.
A Color-Coded Symphony is her latest project which premiered at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum in 2017. This performance piece is a musical experience connecting the audience’s ethnic origins to rhythms of the world. Its aim is to nurture curiosity and openness towards other cultures through music.
Los Angeles Times, Jonny Whiteside writes:
“Folk singer-songwriter Aireene Espiritu works in the elemental substance of vernacular American music with an uncanny ease. Whether blues, hillbilly, soul, folk or R&B … she demonstrates masterly command of each. Her original compositions mix deft lyrical construction and classic form just as impressively … An authentic, authoritative vocalist and with distinctly sensitive manner of phrasing…”
No Depression, Terry Roland writes:
“A rare breed of artist, a soul singer, a folk troubadour, a blues artist, a busk show princess, a skiffle tear-stained street singer with a heart as big as the history of the music that drives her. And in the final analysis, she is a storyteller without borders or cultural limitations.”