Kate and Anna McGarrigle

Early years

Anna and Kate McGarrigle were born in Montreal of mixed Irish- and French-Canadian background, but lived their childhood in the Laurentian Mountains village of Saint-Sauveur-des-Monts, northwest of Montreal, where they learned piano from village nuns. In the 1960s, in Montreal, while Kate was studying engineering at McGill University and Anna art at the École des beaux-arts de Montréal, they began performing in public and writing their own songs. From 1963 to 1967 they teamed up with Jack Nissenson and Peter Weldon to form the folk group Mountain City Four.

Music career

Into the twenty-first century, Kate and Anna McGarrigle continued to write music, to record and to perform with assorted accompanying musicians including Gerry Conway, Pat Donaldson, Ken Pearson, Michel Pépin, Chaim Tannenbaum and Joel Zifkin.

Their songs have been covered by a variety of artists including Maria Muldaur, Nana Mouskouri, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, Billy Bragg, Cyndi Lauper, Pet Shop Boys, Chloé Sainte-Marie, Judy Collins, Anne Sofie von Otter and others. The covers of their songs by well-known artists led to the McGarrigles getting their first recording contract in 1974. They created ten albums from 1975 through 2008.

Although associated with Quebec's anglophone community, the McGarrigles also recorded and performed many songs in French. Two of their albums, Entre la jeunesse et la sagesse (also known as French Record) and La vache qui pleure, are entirely in French, and many of their other records include one or two French songs as well. Most of their French songs were co-written by Philippe Tatartcheff, with occasional input from Kate McGarrigle's son, Canadian-American solo artist Rufus Wainwright.

Their version of Wade Hemsworth's song, "The Log Driver's Waltz" grew famous as the soundtrack for a 1979 animated film directed by John Weldon at Canada's National Film Board. They provided backing vocals on Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds's 2001 album No More Shall We Part. They appeared on the children's TV show Sharon, Lois & Bram's Elephant Show in Season 4, episode 50 entitled "Sibling Rivalry".

Personal lives

From 1971 Kate McGarrigle was married to singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III. Their children are Rufus and his sister Martha, both singers. The two divorced in 1976. Kate McGarrigle died January 18, 2010 at the age of 63 after fighting a rare form of cancer.

Anna McGarrigle is married to Canadian journalist and author Dane Lanken. The couple have two children, Lily Lanken and Sylvan Lanken, and live near the Eastern Ontario town of Alexandria, in North Glengarry. Dane has appeared as a vocalist on several of the sisters' albums and in 2007 wrote their career biography.

Another sister, Jane McGarrigle, is a film and television composer who acted as business manager for Kate and Anna, and also wrote and performed several songs with the duo.

Honours and awards

They were appointed Members of the Order of Canada in 1993 and received the Governor General's Performing Arts Award in 2004.

On November 22, 2006, they received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2006 SOCAN Awards in Toronto.

Albums

With other artists

DVDs

Film work