Anna is an original and inventive singer-songwriter with a musical style that, although based in folk, spans an array of genres. A multi-instrumentalist musical dynamo, she intertwines this fluency with a poetic and intimate lyricism, communicating her unique take on the world around her. Her captivating stage presence is combined with a playful approach to performing which reaches out to the whole audience.

In 2017 Anna got together with Sally Barker and Marion Fleetwood to form the dynamic trio I O T A writing, recording and performing their own collaborative material sparking interest from promoters and concert-goers everywhere. They released their EP in 2017 and their debut album later that year ‘Oh Yeh Yeh’.

In 2019 Anna started writing, recording and performing with Sally Barker. This duo, Sally Barker & Anna Ryder, is now touring with their original material. They released their debut album ‘When I Wake Up’ in 2019.

Following Anna’s work with musicians from the re-formed Fotheringay initially for the Jerry Donahue Benefit Concert, she helped form ‘The Sandy Denny Project’ with Sally Barker, PJ Wright, Marion Fleetwood, Mat Davies and Mark Stevens.  Performing songs from right across Sandy’s career, they merge the obscure with the obvious, the subtly understated with the direct and rocky.

Following her new activity and appearance with IOTA at Shrewsbury Folk Festival, Anna has now been invited to become part of The Ballads of Child Migration  which is a tribute to children who were part of the migration schemes in Britain aimed at those who were ‘deprived of a normal family’ – some of whom were sent abroad as recently as 1970.

Anna also continues to gig solo, and works with various artists as well as to record, arrange and write. These artists include the inimitable Keith Donnelly  (as Something A Bit Different doing a set of interesting and diverse covers) and  Feast of Fiddles member and Joe Brown mando/fiddler Tom Leary.

At Cropredy Convention 2019 Anna was ‘Fairport Extension’ with Dave Mattacks, PJ Wright, Phil Bond, Sally Barker, Edmond Whitcombe and Fairport; playing piano, accordion, French horn and trumpet as well as singing on 11 songs, 3 of which she arranged brass parts for.  She also performed her song The Crowd.

Anna has performed mainly on the folk scene playing all kinds of venues from small clubs to large festivals. She has made six albums including ‘Pockets On Fire’ which was released on the Fairport Convention label ‘Woodworm’ with Fairport playing on eight of the tracks, and, in 2016, the long-awaited The Art of Making Faces was released which is an album of extraordinary beauty and subtle complexity bursting with original songs and littered with lots of interesting  musicians and sounds.

Support is from Andrew Loake.