Nishla Smith is a jazz singer and composer. Her work takes various forms but is always centred around storytelling. She has recently made work for Manchester Jazz Festival, Opera North and Manchester Collective. In spring 2022 she will be playing the role of ‘Bird’ in the Octagon Theatre X Theatre by the Lake coproduction of ‘Kes’ directed by Atri Banerjee.
In 2020, she toured her first original staged work, ‘What Happened to Agnes’, made in collaboration with visual artist Luca Shaw and improvising pianist Tom Harris. ‘Agnes’ was co-produced by Opera North and Leeds Playhouse, and toured nationally with support from Arts Council England. Following ‘Agnes’, Nishla along with her collaborators, formed Ulita, a cross-disciplinary arts collective focused on creating music-driven theatre. She was awarded a ‘Developing Your Creative Practice’ grant to work with the Ulita team on a second show. ‘Sister’ commenced rehearsals at Britten Pears Arts in summer 2021 with support from Arts Council England, and was selected as part of Mercury Musical Developments’ BEAM, a showcase for new British musical theatre. From September- December 2021, Ulita partnered with Olympias Music Foundation to develop ‘I Like I Hope I Am’, a new community-focused piece of staged work in her home-town of Manchester.
In Autumn last year, she released a debut album, ‘Friends With Monsters’ on Whirlwind Recordings. The album was launched at Ronnie Scott’s and received critical acclaim. ‘Friends With Monsters’ is a narrative album that wrestles with her anxiety and insomnia. It’s set over one troubled night and divided into moments by interludes she wrote as duos with each member of her band– ‘Twilight’ for myself and pianist Richard Jones, ‘Midnight’ for me and bassist Josh Cavanagh-Brierley, ‘3 AM’ with Johnny Hunter on drums and ‘Dawn’ for herself and Aaron Wood on flugel. As part of the album, she commissioned some Manchester and Stockport based visual artists to respond to each song, she set these artworks opposite their corresponding lyrics in a zine which is a companion to the CD. She also made three music videos which capture the narrative of the album– one a collaboration with Manchester dance collective I M Pact, one made of a series of elaborate props and costumes she handmade over the lockdown out of recycled and found objects, and one shot on the east coast beach of Thornwick Nab.
Nishla is currently working on Night Porter, a duo project with saxophonist Emma Johnson born out of a recent Manchester Jazz Festival Commission, and making new music for East Neuk Festival. The latter project, ‘Aether’ is a song cycle for four improvising musicians, made in collaboration with scientists at St Andrews University. Nishla is currently part of Jazz North and City Music Foundation’s artist rosters.
