A music teacher and multi-instrumentalist from Annaghdown is to move to Berlin to further a budding career as a DJ after her first Electric Picnic gig.

Melanie Higgins, who goes by the stage name Mejmi, became a huge hit on the video sharing website TikTok during the Covid lockdown when she fused her fiddle playing with techno music.

The 24-year-old former Presentation College student has a degree in music from the Cork School of Music and teaches piano, violin and cello at the Galway Music Academy, based in Claregalway.

On the train back from the Electric Picnic weekend in Stradbally, Co Laois – the country’s biggest music and arts festival – Melanie reveals that she has been totally in love with music since she was young

An only child, she is the daughter of drummer Joe Higgins, who plays with the wedding band Jive Buddies.

“It is definitely the way that I express myself freely. When I was younger, I was painfully shy, especially in secondary school, but when I would come home, I would straight away go to the piano and play away until my heart was content.”

She played traditional music and classical music on the violin, as well as classical on the piano and studied the cello professionally. She composed music, including a piece for an orchestra which she played in the Glasgow Concert Hall.

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