* En anglais uniquement
While more widely known for her work as an actress, singer, songwriter, and pianist
Alicia Witt has been performing music since her earliest days onscreen. After working mainly as a pianist, she released an eponymous EP in 2009 that showcased her clear debt to the likes of
Elton John and
Billy Joel, and a strong, warm voice to match it. Her first studio album, the
Ben Folds-produced
Revisionary History, appeared in 2015. She followed it with releases including 2021's The Conduit, which marked her debut as co-producer.
Alicia Witt first appeared onscreen in 1984, playing Alia Atreides in
David Lynch's adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune. She wasn't even ten years old, so it's little wonder that she wound up being pigeonholed as an actress and not a musician, even though she had been playing piano for at least as long as she had been acting. It is true that she appeared onscreen more often than she recorded, returning to duty for
Lynch in a 1990 episode of Twin Peaks and then regularly showing up on film and television over the next two decades, breaking through with the 1995 film Mr. Holland's Opus and her four-season run on the sitcom Cybill. During all this,
Witt continued to concentrate on the piano. She studied the instrument at Boston University and entered national competitions, but she first started to gain attention for her prowess when she starred in the musical Piano/Forte in 2006.
In 2009,
Witt made the shift to pop music, releasing the Alicia Witt EP. Three years later came Live at Rockwood. She finally released her full-length debut,
Revisionary History, in May of 2015; it was produced by
Ben Folds. A year later, she joined the cast of ABC's Nashville, as country singer Autumn Chase, and moved to Music City. Amid continued work as an actress, she returned to the studio, this time with Grammy-winning producer
Jacquire King (
Norah Jones,
Kings of Leon). The resulting
15,000 Days EP followed in August 2018. A second studio album, The Conduit, saw release in late 2021. It was produced by
Witt with
Jordan Lehning and
Band of Horses'
Bill Reynolds. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine & Marcy Donelson