Introduction to jazz: Nina Virant and Jaka Arh

Nina Virant is a vocalist, composer, performer and vocal coach. She is active on many fields – traditional slovenian music, pop, soul, jazz and experimental genres and contemporary theatre. She opened the 60th Jazz Festival Ljubljana in 2019 with her project LAS. She graduated Conservatory of Amsterdam in the same year. She premiered her project Ansambel za preužitek in year 2021 at Druga Godba Festival in Cankar Cenre. During winter 2022 the project evolved into VIRA, an ensemble of exceptional musicians, collaborating with one of the most active drummers on the European jazz scene, Gard Nilssen. Her upcoming album is coming out in summer 2023.

Jaka Arh is a sound artist and saxophonist based in Basel, Switzerland, active in experimental and jazz music fields. He is currently a master student of Audio Design at Musik Akademie Basel. Both as an electronic and acoustic musician he is a member of various musical projects, with sound-poetry trio LILAMORS and electro-jazz band Trokut in the foreground. His latest work Obris is a representation of his solo musical endeavors — an electronic work, inspired by the aesthetics of glitch, that blurs the border between controlled randomness and repetitive musical structures.