Susan McKeown (born February 6, 1967) is an Irish folk singer, songwriter, arranger and producer. Early years Susan McKeown was born on February 6, 1967, in Terenure, Dublin, Ireland. She briefly attended the Municipal College of Music, Chatham Row, Dublinnow incorporated into the Dublin Institute of Technology)as a teenager before abandoning a potential career in opera order to sing folk and rock. Together with John Doyle, McKeown formed The Chanting House in 1989. Mainly performing as a duo, they toured Europe with Donogh Hennessy and other musicians, playing original songs and traditional tunes. They released a cassette-only album titled The Chanting House in 1990. Move to New York Upon graduating from University College Dublin, McKeown was awarded a scholarship to attend the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in Manhattan. In 1990, with a bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland, she relocated to New York City. Doyle followed and they were soon to join forces with Seamus Egan and Eileen Ivers, with whom they recorded one live cassette and one track, "If I Were You" (a song penned by McKeown), which they contributed to the album Straight Outta Ireland in 1993. Solo career McKeown was a regular performer at the coffeehouse Sin-é along with emerging songwriters Jeff Buckley, Dorothy Scott, Gerry Leonard, Amy Correia, Jack McKeever and began writing more songs with encouragement from musician and producer Jimi Daley (featured in the documentary Amazing Grace: Jeff Buckley). With Chris Cunningham, Michelle Kinney, Lindsey Horner and Joe Trump, as "Susan McKeown and the Chanting House" McKeown performed at clubs such as Sin-é, Fez, The Bottom Line and the Bowery Ballroom, and recorded a cassette album,Snakes, in 1993. But it was the release of Bones in 1995produced by Daleythat garnered her international attention and launched her touring and recording career. The latter featured original songs with her take on a centuries-old keen (caoineadh) and an arrangement of Robert Burns' "Westlin' Winds", later recorded by Fairport Convention. In 1997, she recorded three albums: her own Bushes & Briars (Alula); Peter & Wendy, the soundtrack to the Obie Award-winning Mabou Mines theatrical production of the same name, which was composed by Johnny Cunningham; and Through the Bitter Frost & Snow, a collaboration with bassist Lindsey Horner. At this time, she began to divide her work into albums of traditional music (Bushes and Briars, 1998) and singer-songwriter albums (Bones, 1995; Prophecy, 2002). Around 1992, Scots