Asia Mieleszko

Joanna (Asia) Mieleszko is a singer, conductor, protector of the (very) old, and pioneer of the daringly new. Recent highlights include premiering Hannah Barnes’ The Garden at The Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology, joining the Cortona Sessions for New Music as a 2024 vocal fellow, workshopping “Across Tongues,” an audio-visual interrogation of third culture as a 2023/24 New Jersey Folk Festival Artist-in-Residence, and performing programs of Ukrainian village polyphony at the 2023 Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

With musical roots in both Eastern European folk music and the classical tradition, Asia’s noise-making oscillates between these musical conventions and, on occasion, bridges them. She’s looking forward to repeating “Across Tongues” in Philadelphia, bringing her one-woman show, “Duets for Solo Performer,” to Oh My Ears Festival in Arizona, and returning to New Jersey Folk Festival with her avant-folk outfit, Medukha in the spring.

Outside of her musical endeavors, she works as a photographer and writes for Strong Towns, a non-profit dedicated to upending the destructive development patterns that have robbed American communities the ability to build financially resilient, walkable places. She also has a rare progressive lung disease which is impossible to pronounce: Lymphangioleiomyomatosis.