“With her unique voice, Natashia Kelly sings in a totally personal and inhabited register, revealing various and intertwined sound palettes ,which would probably be wrong to reduce to the four letters of the word jazz.”
(Yan Viseur, live concert L'Aéronef, France)
Natashia Kelly, born in Belgium but with Irish roots, is a singer and composer. The Sean-Nòs singing (Irish a capella) inspires the way she approaches a song. Her jazz-background gives her the freedom to be adventurous, to improvise over pieces, to explore the nuances in her voice and to blend with each instrument. The way she composes and writes lyrics is with great care for story's content. Harmony and lyrics evoke a visual world of our contemporary times.
Natashia Kelly studied at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels with teacher David Linx and studied under Diederik Wissels, Christophe Wallemme, Nathalie Loriers, John Rocco and Kris Defoort. In 2010 she was selected for an Erasmus exchange programme with the Conservatory of Paris CNSMDP (Conservatoire National Supérieur Music et de Danse Paris), where she had Masterclasses and played with Anders Jormin, Fred Hersch, Billy Hart, Bruno Chevillon, Larry Grenadier and many others. At CNSMDP she also took classic singing lessons with Alain Buet.
She has already been the bandleader in several bands and projects:
- Her trio La Nue won the first price in the Jazz Cats Rally in Brussels in 2007.
- With Natashia Kelly Group she released her debut EP The Uncanny in February 2016. The record was very well received and picked up by the Belgian national radio station Klara. In 2020, during a JazzLab tour in Flanders the band released their first full album Inside The Wave, produced by Koen Gisen.
Line-up The Uncanny: Edmund Laurent (guitar), Brice Soniano (double bass), Natashia Kelly (vocals, compositions and lyrics) - featuring Juan Parra (electronics)
Line-up Inside The Wave: Brice Soniano (bass), Jan Ghesquière (guitar), Natashia Kelly (compositions and vocals)
- Natashia also created a project Dear Darkening Ground, which released an album through De W.E.R.F. Records and played all over Flanders and Brussels via JazzLab in 2023.
Line-up: Ruben Machtelinckx (guitar), Dré Pallemaerts (drums), Yannick Peeters (bass), Nicola Andrioli (keys), Natashia Kelly (compositions and vocals)
- Currently, she is recording and touring with her newest formation Natashia Kelly Band and they expect to release their album 'A new beginning in this cold season' in 2026 -2027 (label Challenge Records International).
Line-up: Benjamin Sauzereau (guitar), Dré Pallemaerts (drums), Yannick Peeters (bass), Natashia Kelly (compositions and vocals)
Apart from these full bands, Natashia also formed several duos with talented fellow musicians:
- Since 2011 Natashia has a duo with Yannick Peeters, called Bass&Voice. They won the first price in The New Port Jazz Rally in 2012 and were laureate at the Crest Jazz Vocal Contest 2016 in France. Later that year, in August 2016, the duo played in the "Young Talent" category at the Ostend Theater Festival, and was selected for the festival "Les Détours de Babel" in Grenoble (FR) in 2018. The duo was also selected for the project Early Barok Music Revisited during the Antwerpen Barokjaar, Rubens Inspireert.
- Her duo with pianist Nicola Andrioli.
New album coming up : A new beginning in this cold season (2026-2027)