Natalia Kiës
born in Nikolai and raised in North Rhine-Westphalia, studied classical piano at the Folkwang University of the Arts Essen and subsequently jazz/pop singing at the ArtEZ University of the ArtsArnhem. She also completed a second degree in psychology at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf on the influence of music and stress on cognitive performance. In New York she took master classes with Gretchen Parlato, Kurt Elling, Shai Maestro and Taylor Eigsti. She lives and works in Cologne and New York.

Music expresses what cannot be said and what is impossible to be silent about. (Victor Hugo)

Seen in this light, Natalia Kiës has always been communicative, her primary language music: while her peers mangle melodica, recorder and glockenspiel for the purpose of making sound, the five-year-old sits at home at the piano of her own free will and practices classical music with childlike enthusiasm. This idyll is interrupted when the family moves from Upper Silesia to Germany after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Natalia has to leave her beloved piano behind - a drama for the then eight-year-old. Her passion for music lies dormant at first, too many impressions and challenges in the new country have to be overcome. But the urge to dedicate her life to music grows...

Indeed, everything in Natalia's music reflects her personal life path... not straightforward, but intricate, labyrinthine... with detours and stops in a wide variety of musical countries stranded in her own musical world, full of delightful contrasts and plenty of room for development. Influenced by her piano playing, her voice, diverse impressions of experimental jazz pop and stylistic devices of "musique concrète", her music speaks a truly universal language, revealing a sound-induced being somewhere else.