Nina Ernst

Biography
Press

Nina Ernst is a singer and actress, based in Berlin, Germany. She grew up near Hamburg, where she completed her education at the „Schule für Schauspiel Hamburg“. She then moved to Berlin, where she discovered her love for jazz singing. In addition to her classical singing training, she took lessons with jazz legend Sheila Jordan, among others.

In 2006 she interpreted German folk songs in Brazilian music style on the album “Degas/Weiser - Heimat, von fern so nah” (Label: Piranha Musik), with which she subsequently toured South America.

2009 she recorded the Bossa Nova - CD “Nina Ernst canta Jobim” in Rio de Janeiro (Label: Fina Flor), which has received many good reviews in Brazil and was even praised by Bossa Nova legend Leny Andrade (quote: “One of the best Bossa Nova CDs I have heard”).

In São Paulo she performed for the video projects “CROSS” and “Rawar Cabaret” by the photo and video artist Gal Oppido. 2014/15 she toured as guest singer with Dieter Meier (Yello) on the international “Out of Chaos” tour (Berlin, New York, London, Zurich etc.).

Since 2014 she was touring with her band - consisting of musicians of the elite of Brazilian instrumentalists - and her own show concepts live on behalf of the German Embassy and various consulates in Brazil and Argentina.

In 2017 she was invited to the “Bossa Nova in Concert” festival in Rio de Janeiro with her show “Nina Ernst canta Jobim”. In 2019 she was guest singer on the DVD of the live recording “Fábio Carneirinho em Paris” with Forró - music underneath the Eiffel Tower and presented her show “A Dor do Amor” with Brazilian lovesongs in Rio de Janeiro.

In her music and video project “A Diva's Mind” she brought the threads together and connected top-class artists from the two cities of Berlin and São Paulo in a creative collaboration. The album “A Diva's Mind” (Label: Fina Flor) was released at the end of 2019.

Together with Brazilian singer Tico de Moraes she recorded the duet “Desarvorar” and published her own composition "Ich hab' nie nachgedacht" in 2020. She collaborated with Brazilian pianist Fernando Merlino to score the song "Film Noir" in 2021.

Her new album "Dunkles Licht" (Label: GLM Music), a mixture of self-written chansons in German and Brazilian compositions, arranged by pianist Tino Derado, was released in 2024.

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It was exactly this uniqueness in the style of Tom Jobim - who died in 1994 - as one of the main names of the bossa nova era, allied to the personality of his songs, that caused German singer Nina Ernst to fall in love at first sight to the point of paying tribute to the Rio de Janeiro composer with 12 of his main pearls interpreted in her soft voice, with a refined Portuguese, on the CD "Nina Ernst canta Jobim".

- Elô Baêta about "Nina Ernst canta Jobim", O Jornal Dois (Brazil)

In short, a transgressive album that, listened to track by track, turns out to be an exciting repertoire that offers fourteen facets of a jazz singer without prejudices. A repertoire of broad vision that could well serve for a casting exercise on Broadway, for example, and that allows to know Nina Ernst from many points of view in a single listening.