EFG London Jazz Festival presents… Nell Greco

Nell Greco is a London-based vocalist and songwriter with a deep curiosity for story-telling and improvised voice work. Having spent her formative training years performing a classic standards repertoire around UK music venues and jazz clubs, she now incorporates those foundations into songwriting, collaborative vocal improvisation and exploring the potential and versatility of the voice.

As well as her original music project, Nell currently performs with Ruth Goller’s Skylla, and writes and performs as one half of Akimbo – a project she and guitarist Pedro Velasco started to explore the boundaries of their instruments, in duo. Inspired by players like Lionel Loeke and Gretchen Parlato, they look to play with the “limitations” and possibilities of music given the size of the ensemble. They’re currently producing their first album of originals, due out in 2024.

During 2021s lockdown, Nell was a member of This Is Our Music alongside Kit Downes, Chris Montague, Ruth Goller, Pedro Velasco and Thea Spiers. The collective’s aim was to continue performing their original material live despite the limitations of the time, and these broadcast performances fuelled her desire to write more. The result was a menagerie of stories, rich in imagery but open to interpretation from the listener.

The songs come to life thanks to the incredible group of intuitive and versatile players who join her in performance. Each player brings their distinct voice to create soundscapes that reflect the meaning and enhance the music. Genre doesn’t really apply at this point – yes they’re all established in the world of jazz, but each is listening, improvising and responding to the other, bringing this element of jazz tradition into a new realm of hard-to-pin-down music. In 2022 she recorded the material at Eastcote Studios and the record, ‘Inanima’, was released on Clonmell Jazz Social in 2023.

Maria Chiara Argirò – keys

Pedro Velasco – guitar

Ruth Goller – bass

Simon Roth – drums