Mel Parsons flew off with the NZ Music Awards’ Folk Tui 2020 for her fourth album ‘Glass Heart’. The award was made at the Auckland Folk Festival, held at Kumeu over Auckland Anniversary weekend, near the end of January.

Recorded with renowned producer Mitchell Froom in LA, the album was also a finalist for the 2019 Taite Music Prize and in the Top 20 of 2019’s APRA Silver Scroll Award.

While this is Parsons’ first Tui award, two previous albums ‘Over My Shoulder’ and ‘Red Grey Blue’ were finalists for Folk Album of the Year – in 2009 and 2011 respectively. The other finalists for the 2020 Best Folk Artist Tui were Victoria Vigenser and husband-and-wife duo Paper Cranes 折り鶴.

Recent previous winners of the Tui for Best Folk Album

• 2013 – Great North – ‘Halves’
• 2014 – Tattletale Saints – ‘How Red Is the Blood’
• 2015 – Great North – ‘Up In Smoke’
• 2016 – Holly Arrowsmith – ‘For The Weary Traveller’
• 2017 – Guy Wishart – ‘West By North’
• 2018 – Albi & The Wolves – ‘One Eye Open’
• 2019 – The Frank Burkitt Band – ‘Raconteur’