Jessie Burns

Jessie Burns (Suffolk, England) is a British Celtic and Cross-Over 4 and 5 String fiddle player and composer. She was a member of the Celtic Rock band Gaelic Storm, as the fiddle player and a backup vocalist. She is currently (2009) working on her first solo CD. When not touring, she resides in Boulder, Colorado.

The following biography appears on the website for Gaelic Storm:

Jessie grew up in England, raised by her American mother and Anglo-Irish father in rural East Anglia, and through various parental marriages, is one of eight kids

As a child, she played recorder, violin and piano, competing and performing nationally and internationally in orchestras and chamber groups. Music was constantly played at home, and her Irish grandparents got her hooked on Irish Trad at a young age. Three of her siblings are in successful rock bands in London, so music continues to be at the center of the family.

After graduating high school, she moved to Kalimantan, Indonesia, to teach English for six months. Upon her return to Old Blighty, she went to Durham University to study Anthropology with ethnomusicology.

She moved to Colorado in 1997, lured by the Rockies and the promise of powder skiing in Steamboat Springs. When not on the hill, she worked for five years as a Program Director of Strings in the Mountains Music Festival. Incidentally, for part of this time she lived in a house full of five snowboarding guys - little did she realize the great training she was getting for her future gig with Gaelic Storm! She also played in numerous bands, and started playing oldtime and bluegrass music regularly.

In 2005 she moved to Boulder, Colorado to play with a Trad Irish band, The Wayfarers, which came second in the prestigiousTelluride Bluegrass Festival's Band Competition and opened for bands such as Cherish The Ladies, Boys of the Lough, Yonder Mountain String Band, Nickel Creek and Psychograss.

Before joining Gaelic Storm in April 2007, she was playing and recording with songcrafter, Gregory Alan Isakov and his band The Freight and had traveled to England to work with singer songwriter David Ford. She has also played with a number of musicians includingDarol Anger, Johnny B Connolly, Tony Furtado, Sally Van Meter, Vince Herman, John Doyle, Liz Carroll, Crooked Still, Slipstream and Ross Martin, amongst others and performed at festivals including Rocky Grass, Folksfest, Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, and Telluride Bluegrass Festival.

In 2012, Jessie left Gaelic Storm to start a family and was replaced on fiddle by Kiana Weber.

When not playing music she can usually be found hiking or skiing in the Rocky Mountains, cooking or tinkering with her ancient VW Golf.