Natalia Smirnova piano player, composer, singer and arranger

Natalia Smirnova is a rising star of the Russian jazz. Her eccentric manner of playing, powerful and energetic combined with lyric pianism is noted by jazz lowers and professionals. She finished a musical college in classical piano and then went to St.Petersburg to study at the jazz department of University of Culture. In 2005 Natalie moved to Moscow and started singing. She collected a quartet including also a guitar, bass and drums to tour Russian regions and participate in jazz festivals. In 2006 she was invited to work with the famous Moscow jazz band directed by George Garanyan and during two years got valuable orchestra experience. The same year Natalia took part in his first vocal contest in Finland “Lady Summertime”.

 In February 2006 Natalia took part in a student exchange program in at Louisville University in Kentucky, USA and was lucky to learn from a legendary vocalist and scat singer Joe Hendrix, the piano player Harry Pickens and saxophone player David Liebman. 3 months later Louisville University sent their students to Russia, with whom Natalie toured Russia for 2 weeks.

In 2007 Natalie met a famous Russian jazz drummer Oleg Butman, who mostly lives in New York often coming to Russia on tours. Oleg invited Natalie to his quartet, which gave her a unique opportunity to work with such renowned US jazz musicians as Marcus Strickland, Joe Locke, Chuck Loeb, Eric Marienthal, Roy Hargrove, Ravi Coltrane, Myron Walden, Gregory Porter, Nicole Henry, Jann Parker and many others.

In addition to touring Russia with invited US headliners artists Natalie and Oleg were writing music to create their own project called “Jazz Passion”, which they presented to Russian and also American jazz public at clubs, concert halls, and festivals 2009 was largely devoted to recording their original album which got the name “Passion” and consisted of 10 original pieces of Natalie Smirnova and Oleg Butman.

In 2010 the album released in New York under the same label of “Butman Music” and accompanied by the presentation in “Dizzy’s Coca Cola” club in NYC. In 2012 was released “Runway”.