Isa Burke is a musician based in Durham, North Carolina (and sometimes in southern Maine). Using electric and acoustic guitars, fiddle, voice, and sometimes other instruments, she creates music that draws from traditional folk, modern indie-rock, and beyond. In recent years, Isa has built a reputation as a versatile and in-demand collaborator, a musical Swiss Army knife at home in many styles and contexts. Whether singing harmony vocals, playing traditional fiddle tunes, or crafting spiky, atmospheric electric guitar sounds, she brings a voracious musical appetite and a diverse skill set to a vast array of projects. Best known as the right-hand woman of songwriters like Carsie Blanton and Aoife O’Donovan, she is also a dedicated student of traditional music, and a songwriter, prose writer, educator, and producer.

Raised in a musical family in Maine, Isa came up through the Northeast’s thriving traditional music community. She studied at Berklee College of Music, where she was awarded the 2014 Fletcher Bright Scholarship (given annually to an outstanding fiddler) and studied with Darol Anger, Bruce Molsky, and Bonnie Hayes. Meanwhile, she began paying her dues and building her chops playing shows in various basement clubs around Boston and Cambridge.

She spent the first years of her music career as one-third of the band Lula Wiles, which released 3 albums and an EP on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and toured internationally, appearing at Newport Folk Festival and winning acclaim from NPR Music, Rolling Stone, WNYC, and Paste Magazine. Their third album, Shame and Sedition, prominently features Isa’s sonic sensibilities and electric guitar work.

These days, Isa can be found playing fiddle and electric guitar alongside the folk-rock revolutionary activist songwriter Carsie Blanton. Previously, she spent two years (fall 2021-2023) touring internationally as a member of Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Aoife O’Donovan’s Age of Apathy Band, including appearances at the Kennedy Center, NPR’s Tiny Desk, Jimmy Kimmel Live, CBS Saturday Morning, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, and Telluride Bluegrass Festival. In 2023-2024, she toured as a member of cult-favorite indie band the Mountain Goats. Isa regularly tours with other acts including Lindsay Lou and Darlingside, and has been featured on recorded releases by Sam Moss, Jake Xerxes Fussell, Carolyn Kendrick, and many others. She also released a 2023 old-time fiddle album with some friends in Maine as Snowglobe Stringband.

In large part due to her work with Aoife O’Donovan, Isa received a nomination for Instrumentalist of the Year at the 2023 Americana Music Awards. Isa also served as producer for Nashville singer-songwriter Liv Greene’s debut record Every Bright Penny and has additional production projects forthcoming. A bandmate at heart, she enjoys nothing more than the interlocking of harmony vocals, of guitar and drums, of banjo and fiddle.

Isa is also an experienced and devoted educator, helping musicians to internalize the sounds that inspire them and build the skills to thrive in many musical contexts. She teaches private lessons and group workshops in guitar, fiddle, harmony singing, ensemble playing, performance, music theory, improvisation, and songwriting. Isa recently became a contributor to Acoustic Guitar magazine, writing artist profiles as well as creating monthly instructional videos as part of AG’s inaugural Teaching Artists cohort. Along with longtime friend and collaborator Carolyn Kendrick, Isa is the co-creator and co-director of the Gender Equity Audio Workshop, a multi-day workshop series helping women and gender-expansive musicians to build their music production and engineering skills in a professional studio.

She will eventually make a solo album, but she won’t rush it.

PRESS

“Masterful work… achingly beautiful violin [and] gritty, Neil Young-like electric guitar leads” — PopMatters

“Burke was a triple-threat on vocal, guitar, and fiddle, showing herself to be the band’s not-so-secret weapon. Her guitar work, echoing and atmospheric on ‘Sister Starling,’ stinging on ‘Hornets,’ was a particular highlight.” — Boston Globe

“As versatile a musician as they come, and a true showwoman who commands the stage and the audience’s attention” — Red Line Roots

“A sharp takedown, riotous and righteous… a radio-gold chorus so catchy it becomes easy to forget that Lula Wiles is singing, as they put it, about the ‘inevitable downfall of capitalism.’” — Rolling Stone