

Fursaxa is Tara Burke. Formerly a member of the Philadelphia band UN, Tara started her Fursaxa project in 1999 after UN disbanded. Since then she has released six full-length albums on labels such as ATP, Time-Lag, and Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace, as well as four self-released discs. Her hypnotic music has been compared to both Velvet Underground chanteuse Nico and medieval mystic Hildegard Von Bingen. Her live performances are based around vocals, flutes, percussion, organ, guitar, and mandolin, all layered and looped in an attempt to transport her audience to ethereal and sacred realms, while her recordings add an expanded array of instrumentation such as violin, cello, banjo, balalaika, accordion, dulcimer, and bells and other exotic percussion. She has recorded and collaborated with a variety of artists as a guest or side-project, including Acid Mothers Temple, fellow Philadelphians Bardo Pond, the Iditarod, Six Organs of Admittance, and Helena Espvall (Espers), and she was part of the Valerie Project, a 2007 expanded group that recorded a new score for legendary Czech New Wave film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. While Fursaxa has toured extensively with fellow travelers including Jack Rose, Sharron Kraus, Alexander Tucker, and Spires That in the Sunset Rise, she is currently playing and recording in the rural surroundings of Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley.