Ottawa Sun

Ana Miura
Where: GCTC
When: Sunday, 8 p.m.

After years as a local folk music icon, Ana Miura’s finally got a day job, and it comes with an office, a computer and a water cooler.

In February, she became the new general manager of the Ottawa Folk Festival, but she hasn’t exactly traded in her guitar for a laptop. Not yet, anyway, not with the launch of a brand new album called The Kindness of Years and an Acoustic Waves gig at the Great Canadian Theatre on Sunday (March 14).

“I was looking for something more stationary,” Miura says. “After years of constant touring, I wanted to stay closer to home for my eight-year-old. Being the GM of the festival makes me feel closer, more intimate with the fans, too. I love the job because I love the people.”

Miura, who’s recorded three albums and heads the Babes For Breasts campaign, came to the festival’s top job last summer, when Chris White, the festival’s founding artistic director, recruited the motivated Miura to co-ordinate the festival’s Britannia Park gardens when she wasn’t playing the main stage with Bruce Cockburn, Joel Plaskett and Steven Page.

She took to it so quickly that White asked Miura if she would co-ordinate the Ontario Council of Folk Festival conference in Ottawa last October.

That’s when the Ottawa Folk Festival board approached her to temporarily fill in for Tatiana Nemchin, who had resigned as the festival’s general manager. Miura welcomed the chance to run the festival, even on a temporary basis.

By February, she was offered the post full-time, while Dylan Griffith replaced a retiring Chris White as the festival’s artistic director.

“I love it because it’s a busy job, creative and fun. It’s great to be a part of a working environment made up completely of music lovers.”

“We hope to respect the traditions of the past while taking the festival in a new direction for the future.”

No doubt, a few folk festival employees, volunteers and fans will be at the Irving Greenberg Theatre Centre on Sunday when “the boss” and her band — Fred Guignon, Stuart Watkins, Ross Murray and David Gaudet — play songs from The Kindness of Years.

Don’t be surprised if it turns into a bit of a love-in.

“Folk festival fans are different from any other fan, quieter, the listen deeper and respect the songwriter. I feel more pressure to have something good to say when I play for them.”

denis.armstrong@sunmedia.ca