Winner of this year's BMW Welt Young Artist Jazz Award. Naidu comes to Leipzig with a newly assembled band, in which she unites some promising jazz newcomers* of the country.
Afterwards: Michael Wollny Bau.Haus.Klang

Alma Naidu has a voice that touches immediately. With a warm timbre, razor-sharp intonation, phenomenal range and an extraordinary talent for vocalises and scats, she is currently singing her way into the hearts of every audience. Well-deservedly, the Süddeutsche Zeitung calls her "one of the most promising singers on the German scene". At just 25 years of age, she is a prizewinner of the Gasteig Competition, Jugend jazzt, the Kurt Maas Jazz Award, this year's BMW Welt Young Artist Jazz Award and, as of a few weeks ago, the Bavarian Art Promotion Award.

As the child of an opera singer and a conductor, Alma Naidu grew up surrounded by classical music. Piano and violin lessons, later dance and musical singing were as much a part of her wide-ranging musical socialization as playing guitar and her fondness for the hard rock band Metallica. However, it is not only her voice with which Alma Naidu convinces listeners, critics and juries. The young musician, who studied jazz singing with jazz icon Norma Winstone at the Munich University of Music and Performing Arts and at the renowned Royal Academy of Music in London, impresses above all with her versatility. When it comes to her choice of engagements, she is versatile. For example, she sings in the musical "Jesus Christ Superstar" at the Staatstheater Augsburg, in the Bavarian State Youth Jazz Orchestra or in Roman Sladek's Jazzrausch Bigband. In 2019, she discovered star drummer Wolfgang Haffner, with whom she performed in front of 60,000 people at the large open-air "Stars im Luitpoldhain" in Nuremberg shortly thereafter and can be heard on his album "Kind of Tango," released by ACT in 2020.

However, the musician is increasingly focusing on her own bands and projects, in which she is constantly developing with cross-genre music and sophisticated arrangements. While she has recently been playing in more classical jazz formations, Alma Naidu is coming to Leipzig with a newly assembled band in which she brings together some of the country's most promising jazz newcomers. In addition to Valentin Renner on drums, with whom she has already been working for several years, bassist Lorena Sima (Jakob Bänsch Collective/Karoline Weidt Quartett) and jazz violist Barbara Grahor will be featured.