“Neasa is such a singer that one feels she can adapt her rich mature voice to any material she chooses. A great part of her charm is the very expressive manner in which she performs the material” – Irish Examiner.
“One of the World’s Finest Voices!” – The Guardian Australia.
…Indeed, it was always this way. A few years after Hidden Fears split up, Neasa pursued a solo career that eventually brought her to Australia. During the latter ‘90s, she was a regular fixture on Australian television and on the country’s concert circuit. Collaborating with members of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Neasa eventually developed a distinctive sound that laid the ground for her future repertoire.
Aligned with this is Neasa herself. With an intuitive ability to quickly develop multi-layered discussions with others, a courageous disposition and an adventurous spirit (she once lived and travelled with a headhunting tribe as she crossed the interior of Borneo, and she also negotiated 1,000km along the Amazon in a small fishing boat), the singer and songwriter has all the qualities required to engage an audience.
As the Noughties arrived, so Neasa returned to Ireland, where she has been based ever since, notwithstanding performances in some of Europe’s finest castles, South America (Teatro Amazonas), and Australia (where she sang Ireland’s National anthem twice in the Southern Hemisphere’s largest stadium, the Melbourne Cricket Ground). Other creative ventures followed, but as the bark and bite of the Celtic Tiger softened so it enabled Neasa to gradually fulfil an ambition and realise a dream: to advance towards performing her own dramatic songs with the aid of an orchestra.
Running in parallel with her work as an EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) therapist was the time Neasa needed to reflect on her own understanding of why she had to express herself through her original music.
What she gets from this, she reveals, is something she can’t from anything else in her life. “I feel a deep expression of energy that communicates between an audience and me, and an incredible feeling of freedom when the voice is flowing through me. There is an ideal opportunity for theatrical expression of the story in the song, as well as a perfect chance to write about situations that matter to me and to communicate those messages to others. Ultimately, however, it’s the joy I see in other people’s faces – being carried away on a journey, escaping their own lives for a while – that makes it so important for me.”
Her latest creative venture is the release of new music, which epitomises not only her sense of characteristic creativity but is also symbolic of personal discovery. The new music is a heady cocktail of orchestrated pop, with smart twists of jazz, Latin, folk and theatre. Covering themes of social consciousness and love, as well as perspectives on separation, madness and dreams, they highlight the nature of one woman’s journey from there to here, from then to now.
“I hope that in bringing my gifts to the world,” explains Neasa, “I can inspire people to do the same with their gifts, while enjoying original, deeply moving music and theatrical experiences. In other words, it’s never too late, and we must never give up on ourselves.”
“Careful, you too could be spellbound by Neasa.” – David Gillan, In FolkUs Magazine, Adelaide.
“Why do your tunes get stuck in my head? Earworm tunes!!!” – Courtney Milne
“The distinctive vocal style of Neasa with a voice that is operatic in range” – Hot Press Magazine, Ireland.