Irish composer Michael McGlynn founded ANÚNA in 1987 in an effort to create a choral voice for his homeland. The name was derived from An Uaithne, a collective term for the three ancient types of Irish music - Suantraí (lullaby), Geantraí (happy song) and Goltraí (lament). Today Anúna is the parent ensemble of the ANÚNA COLLECTIVE which includes the ensembles Systir and M’ANAM.

Unlike other European nations, Ireland does not have an indigenous choral tradition and Michael saw this as a unique opportunity to create a new form or choral singing that would take the best of contemporary practices and fuse it with the singular aspects of the Irish tradition of singing, sean nós, and the country’s rich creative heritage. This required him to create music for the group that reflects his own deep relationship to the Irish language, history and landscape.

ANÚNA have sung on many of the greatest stages in the world including the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, Orchard Hall Tokyo, Radio City Music Hall in New York and Minneapolis Symphony Hall.  The group have headlined at the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall.

In February 2017 ANÚNA performed in collaboration with a full Noh theatrical company for the play Takahime, a Japanese adaptation of W.B. Yeats' At the Hawk's Well in Tokyo, and in December 2024 performed “Yuki-onna / The Snow Woman” at Sumida Hall in Tokyo.

ANÚNA have been signed to some of the world's major record labels including Decca, Atlantic, Gimell, Universal Classics, Polygram, E1 and Philips. They have release at least twenty albums that feature McGlynn’s original compositions and arrangements. Invocation won a National Entertainment Award for classical music in Ireland while Deep Dead Blue was nominated for a Classical Brit Award in 1999. Celtic Origins (2007), also an award-winning PBS show and DVD, became the number one selling CD on the US World Music Charts while the album Christmas Memories, also a PBS TV special and DVD, reached the Hot 100 of the Billboard Album Chart in 2011. In February 2025 ANÚNA released Eilifð, a startlingly beautiful record completed in Iceland and ended 2025 with the beautiful compilation Tochairm, and exploration of the the transcendental compositions of Michael McGlynn.