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Nishla Smith
Biography
Nishla Smith is an award-winning composer-performer whose work is shaped by the language of jazz and a deep commitment to storytelling. An internationally touring artist, she has performed across the UK, Europe, Australia and Asia, with 2025 marking an especially active year on the road.
Nishla is a Peter Whittingham Jazz Award winner, an International Songwriting Competition award recipient, and an alumna of London Jazz Festival’s prestigious Take Five programme. Her debut album, 'Friends With Monsters', was released on Whirlwind Recordings to critical acclaim, with DownBeat USA describing her singing as “an entrancing beauty,” and praising her lyrics and melodies as the album’s “true trump cards.” In January 2025, she released a surprise live album of jazz standards with long-term collaborator Tom Harris, recorded over a two-night residency at Manchester’s Low Four Studios. The album received a four-star review in Jazzwise magazine, which noted that “Smith invests everything she sings with insight and beauty of tone.”
Alongside her music career, Nishla is an established theatre-maker and performer. She won a UK Theatre Award for her performance as the titular bird in Atri Banerjee’s acclaimed UK touring production of Kes, and originated the role of ‘The Jazz Singer’ in Emma Baggott’s A Taste of Honey at the Royal Exchange Theatre.
As a composer and director, she has been commissioned by Opera North, Manchester Collective, Manchester Jazz Festival, Leeds Playhouse and many others. Her original musical stage show What Happened to Agnes toured the UK and was reprised at the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In 2025, Nishla’s new musical Super was selected for Antipodes Theatre’s Winter Lab in Melbourne, Australia and named the recipient of the Stephen Oliver Award for New Musical Theatre in London, supporting its development in 2026.
Nishla’s second studio album, it’s getting late you’d better go home was released in Spring 2026 on Whirlwind Recordings and launched at London’s Ronnie Scott’s. She toured the album through Asia in August 2026, making her debut at Blue Note Beijing.
Nishla is based between the UK and Australia and can perform in a duo format or with a full band.
Selected Press Quotes
"Intimate, cinematic, and richly immersive, this is an album that grows with every listen and confirms Smith as a singular storytelling voice." ★★★★ Jazzwise
“In an era of relentless brightness, Smith has made a record that trusts shadows.” The National Post
“Her voice is exquisite, a symbol of unreachable beauty.” The Guardian
“She creates a darkly gorgeous interior sonic world” DownBeat USA
“Nishla’s original ballads sound like standards. Maudlin moments shoulder ecstatic reveries.” London Jazz News