Known as Mike Oldfield's older sister, Sally Oldfield is a British singer, songwriter and musician born in Dublin, Ireland, on August 3, 1947. She took dance lessons and studied at the Royal Academy of Ballet on a scholarship, then entered the Royal Ballet School, before turning to music through piano studies. While studying literature and philosophy at Bristol University, she began her musical career performing at the Bristol Troubadour Club in 1967. She recorded a demo with her younger brother Mike Oldfield and went on to duet with him under the name The Sallyangie on the album Children of the Sun, released in 1969 by Transatlantic in the UK and Warner Bros. in the USA. While Mike Oldfield was enjoying worldwide success with his album Tubular Bells (1973), Sally Oldfield was pursuing her own, less exposed career. She teamed up with Finnish musician Pekka Pohjola for an album, Keesojen Lehto (1977), and then went on to produce her own albums in a variety of styles, including folk, pop, synthpop, new age and Celtic influences. Her first solo album, Water Bearer, was released in 1978 on Bronze Records, and met with considerable success in Europe, thanks in particular to the single "Mirrors ", which entered the British charts (No. 19). She followed this up with Easy (1979), Celebration (1980), Playing in the Flame (1981), In Concert (1982), Strange Day in Berlin (1983), Femme (1987), Instincts (1988), Sally Natasha Oldfield (1990) and The Flame (1992), the last two under the name Natasha Oldfield, alternating orchestrated pop productions, electronic experimentation and mystical ballads. She is known for her frequent use of multi-vocal choirs, spiritual motifs and arrangements inspired by nature and folklore. In the 1990s and 2000s, in addition to numerous compilations, she released two original, new-age-oriented albums, Secret Songs (1995) and Flaming Star (2001). Although less publicly active in the 2010s, Sally Oldfield remains a cult figure in British spiritual folk and progressive pop.
