There’d be few more remarkable stories in music than that of Mary Gauthier (pronounced “go-shay”). Given up at birth and adopted out to Italian Catholic parents, Mary led a tumultuous existence complete with addiction, jail, rehab, relapses and eventual recovery, before writing and recording her first songs in her mid 30’s. Critical acclaim was immediate, and has been a constant for this gifted singer/songwriter ever since.

Mary makes a long-awaited return to Australia for a series of performances in conjunction with the release of her new album, The Foundling, an autobiographical song cycle. The Foundling, produced by Cowboy Junkies’ Michael Timmins, is a song cycle about relinquishment and adoption of which Gauthier says, “I was born to an unwed mother in 1962 and surrendered to St. Vincent’s Women and Infants Asylum on Magazine Street in New Orleans, where I spent my first year. I was subsequently adopted but left my adopted family at 15. I wandered for years looking for, but never quite finding a place that felt like home. I searched for, found, and was denied a meeting with my birth mother when I was 45 years old. She couldn’t afford to re-open the wound she’d carried her whole life, the wound of surrendering a baby. The Foundling is my story.”