Mae Karthauser lives in a blue and white caravan on a hilltop farm outside Totnes, Devon, overlooking the sea and moorland with her cat Unicorn and a resident (and slightly troublesome) herd of Devonshire cattle. She can often be spotted performing on the Totnes market square with her red fairground organ, beguiling passers by… But when The Midnight Fairground is in town, an array of alice-in-wonderland paints and polka dots and stripes splash all over her, and she is no more a feral country girl… Mae Karthauser’s voice has taken her from handmade folk song to the elaborate and strange renaissance world; from the vocal music of Eastern Europe, Bulgaria, Africa, North India and Java and back to through to jazz, folk and more popular forms of repertoire. Singing, and earnestly learning violin and piano together with her other six siblings, she has performed and sang in choirs and shows when she was only a few feet above the ground. As a child, she spent her growing years in Hampshire; when not throwing herself onto the backs of ponies late at night under bright starry skies or bombing along country lanes on her rusty shopping bike, she was locked in practice rooms at school, thrashing out song after song on broken pianos and dazzling audiences of wide eyed twelve year olds. In 2009 she was awarded a first class honors degree in vocal performance at Dartington College of Arts, Devon, U.K following a sixteen month exchange project at California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, training with classical/ Bulgarian vocal coach Kate Conklin and late-California Ear Unit composer and percussionist Art Jarvinen. Whilst under Jarvinens’ wing, Mae formed The Good Unit (2008) from five Cal’ Arts musicians and toured extensively in South California. They recorded late in the year and upon her return to UK, an independent album was released in February 2009 entitled “Mae Karthauser and The Good Unit”, recorded and produced by Clinton Patterson under TV Tray Studios, Simi Valley. Within days of returning to what felt like foreign UK soil, a slightly bewildered Mae decided to pull herself together and whip up a new British ensemble… and thus The Midnight Fairground was born, which has since taken the south west by storm, from their first festival performance at Glastonbury festival in June 2009, Mae and The Midnight Fairground have played from markets squares in south of France to bars in London, rural festivals in Austria to regular tours of England's southwest coast, and Bristol's folk and cabaret scene. “Black Horses”, The Midnight Fairground’s new album is due for release on 8th April 2011.