Lee-Ann Curren

Lee-Ann Curren is a freesurfer, musician, and artist. She grew up and lives in Biarritz, in the southwest of France. Her father is three-time world champion Tom Curren. Her mother is Marie-Pascale, a top-ranked European surfer in the 1980s. Her grandfather is the late Pat Curren, one of the pioneers of Waimea Bay and shaper of big-wave elephant guns. Her aunt Marie-Paul is the 1967 French national champ, and her aunt Marie-Christine is a six-time French national champ. Though she’s won a couple of French national championships herself, Lee-Ann is primarily known as a freesurfer who has woven traveling, music-making, and art into that moniker.

In this episode of Soundings, host Jamie Brisick meets with Lee-Ann in the Basque Country to talk about her family’s influence, touring with her band, finding her place, maintaining artistic purity, criticality, and the poetics of movement in sound and water.