Nicky Schrire

Nicky Schrire is a versatile and inventive vocalist and composer whose work has earned her comparisons to artists like Joni Mitchell, Tori Amos, and Esperanza Spalding. She has performed in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, London, Dublin and South Africa, with musicians ranging from Abdullah Ibrahim, Arno Carstens, and Sibongile Khumalo, to Grammy-nominated pianists Gerald Clayton and Gil Goldstein.

Schrire received her Bachelor of Music Degree from the University of Cape Town and her Masters Degree from New York's Manhattan School of Music where she studied with Peter Eldridge, Theo Bleckmann and Dave Liebman. She released three critically acclaimed jazz albums-2012's "Freedom Flight", 2013's "Space and Time", and the 2014 EP "To The Spring"-which earned her comparisons to songwriters like Joan Baez, Becca Stevens, and Mary Chapin Carpenter. With this encouragement, and her jazz stylings borrowing more and more from the folk genre, she recorded a singer-songwriter EP entitled "An Education". The recording features her long-time collaborator, cellist Ariella Caira, and was released on the London folk label Wild Sound Recordings in June 2015.

In 2018, Schrire led her band in a performance at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival that saw journalist Gwen Ansell note that “[Schrire] is doing important work growing an authentic indigenous vocal repertoire that talks about us – and then singing it shrewdly and sweetly.” She also performed her contemporary classical suite Escape: The Ingrid Jonker Suite, which sees Jonker’s poems set to music arranged for string quartet and voice, at the 2018 Suidoosterfees, the 2018 Franschhoek Literary Festival and at the Norval Foundation in January 2019.

Schrire composes in multiple genres and lent her voice to electronic outfit Card On Spokes' 2013 EP "Lead Me To The Water". A passionate educator, she was a lecturer at the University of Cape Town in the Jazz Studies Department for three years and Acting Head of Jazz Voice in 2018. Schrire also has experience as a radio presenter. She compiled and presented "Stepping Out" weekly on Fine Music Radio 101.3 from 2018 to 2019. The two-hour show celebrated the magic of film scores, folk songs, jazz, classical and world music.