Nishla Smith (voice, songs) / Jack Pantazis (guitar) / Barney Loveland (bass) / Darryn Faruggia (drums)

Nishla is a UK-based singer and writer driven by a desire to tell stories. Her unique musical sensibility, along with this preoccupation with narrative, is recurrent throughout a diverse array of musical projects. She’s recently made work for Opera North, Lancaster Jazz Festival and Manchester Collective.

Nishla is a City Music Foundation artist, and is currently part of Jazz North’s Northern Line artist roster. She’s one third of cross-disciplinary arts collective Ulita, and leads an original jazz band, the Nishla Smith Quintet, with whom she released a debut album, ‘Friends With Monsters’ on Whirlwind Recordings in Autumn 2021. Nishla is currently making new music for the Manchester Jazz Festival Originals commission, and working on ‘Aether’ a song cycle for East Neuk Festival.

Tonight she's joined by a band of some of Australia's foremost improvising musicians for an evening of original music and contemporary standards.