Ana Silvera

Ana Silvera is an British songwriter and composer.

Silvera's solo music spans alternative and experimental songwriting, but draws on diverse genres including jazz, pop and contemporary classical music. As a composer, she has been commissioned to write work for ballet, choir, instrumental ensemble and theatre including for Concerto Caledonia, Estonian Television Girls Choir and Royal Ballet.

Her lyrics often draw inspiration from literature, poetry and folklore.

Silvera's recordings have, as of 2018, been added to the Sound Archive at the British Library.

To date, as a solo artist Silvera has released two studio albums, The Aviary (2012), The Fabulist (2022) and a live album, Oracles (2018), which was listed on The Guardian Critics Pick List, and three EPs: Arcana - A Winter EP (2017), Light, Console Me (2020), which features Gambian kora player Sefo Kanuteh, and Gift (2021).

She has performed and recorded with a number of notable artists including Imogen Heap, Olivia Chaney, Jim Moray, Bill Laurance, Jasper Høiby, Alan Hampton, Maya Youssef, Laura Moody, Yo Zushi, Mara Carlyle, Josephine Stephenson, Daughter, Hungarian poet George Szirtes and British composers Emily Hall and Max de Wardener

She is also an interpreter of traditional Ladino song and traces her lineage back to Sephardi Jews who escaped Iberia as refugees during the religious conquests of the 1500s, and later settled in the Ottoman Empire. She has released modern interpretations of Ladino music under the name Yja as part of a duo with cellist Francesca Ter-Berg. and in her duo, Songs We Carry alongside Palestinian oud player Saied Silbak. As of 2020, Silvera holds both British and Portuguese nationality, due to right of return laws.