Anne Sands , the youngest member of the internationally acclaimed Sands Family Folk Group, cut her first album at the age of 12 and by the age of 16 she had swapped the village halls of County Down for Carnegie Hall in New York. Together with her brothers Tom, Colum and Ben she has travelled the world winning new audiences for Irish music and adding a new international dimension to that music. Her unique voice and her sensitive interpretation are an integral part of what makes The Sands Family such a musical phenomenon. Anne's ability to take a song and make it her own is widely recognised throughout the world of Irish music and beyond. Her repertoire includes traditional songs she collected as a child from mentors like Sarah Makem of Keady. She released a compilation of songs, "The Day is Well Spent", from the dozen albums she made with The Sands Family between 1975 and 2001 and from a 1991 collaboration with Kathleen McPeake of the famous Belfast family. These are songs of love and betrayal, exile and the heart's fondness for things familiar. Many of Anne's more traditional songs, such as the 14th century Irish ballad, "Donal Og", are sung unaccompanied in the Sean Nos tradition. On others she accompanies herself on the Irish goatskin drum, the bodhran. Apart from being an accomplished player she also teaches the bodhran at her home in the picturesque village of Rostrevor. Anne also paints and has had several exhibitions.Her subjects include local landscapes and figure paintings of musicians and dancers. She still records and tours with The Sands Family Folk Group, playing regularly at festivals in Britain, Ireland and Germany.
