Hannah Atkins

Hannah Atkins

Hannah Atkins is a singer-songwriter associated with piano-led alternative soul, folktronica and acoustic performance, with further links in the supplied material to electronica and mellow, easy-listening styles. She is from Luttrell, United States, and is identified as a person rather than a group act.

Early life and musical training

Atkins grows up in rural Lincolnshire in a musical family, with a singer-songwriter father, a musical mother and four musical siblings. She begins writing songs at the age of eight, alongside poetry presented on paper with illustrations. She also receives classical piano and violin lessons while growing up. At twelve, after the death of her piano teacher Mrs John, she refuses to be taught by anyone else, but continues with violin lessons and plays first violin in local orchestras.

Songwriting and early performances

At fourteen, Atkins returns to piano playing, teaches herself chords, and starts writing and performing material at local community gatherings around Lincoln. Her first published song, Closer still, appears in 1998 through Radical UK/Integrity Records and is included on several albums. At seventeen, two more songs are published and she becomes a regular performer at the Grapevine festival.

Recordings and releases

After finishing A-levels, Atkins takes a gap year and records a first live album, Dreamer, to help fund travel to Peru, where she works in the shanty towns of Lima. She later records and independently releases a second album, Hold Me, in 2004, selling 1,000 copies and more downloads over the following year. A further album, Falling, is also part of her recorded output.

Community work and social justice

Atkins’s time in Peru and later voluntary work in Watford shape her interest in linking music with social justice. She studies health and development in a human geography degree at Manchester University, where she also continues making music and completes her degree with a 2:1. She wins a grant to complete her final-year dissertation in Ethiopia, studying the impact of HIV/AIDS there. She also works part-time to help set up a drugs and alcohol rehabilitation centre in Manchester for the charity Betel, and sells her album while giving a percentage to the organisation.

MassiveUK and other projects

In 2004, Atkins co-founds a not-for-profit music, arts and media company called MassiveUK with three friends. The project combines music with community action and creative workshops, and it also operates a label that releases music by Becky Higg and Bluebird Kid Clark. Alongside this, she is involved in The Project in Manchester, takes part in the monthly event The Sanctuary where she plays and serves food to homeless people, and helps run a social-justice club night in Manchester’s Northern Quarter.

Style and performance

Atkins describes her live set as built around an easy-listening, riff-based piano style with live strings and guitar, using a loop machine and switching instruments during performance. Her writing is described in the supplied material as developing from acid jazz pieces on her first and second albums into more folktronica-oriented songs. Her material is presented as direct, piano-based songwriting with an emphasis on lyrical and compositional detail.