Biography

Miriam Ast is an international jazz vocalist, band leader and music conservatoire lecturer.

She released her debut album ‘Secret Songs’ in 2018, featuring the acclaimed British saxophonist Stan Sulzmann and played a following release tour in the UK and her home country Germany with pianist Victor Gutierrez. She won Best Vocalist Award in 2017 and was a semi-finalist of the Shure Montreux Jazz Voice competition that same year. She was a senior lecturer at Leeds Conservatoire in the north of England from 2017- 2021 and since her return to Germany, she has been teaching  jazz singing at the music conservatoire in Freiburg and at Würzburg university of Music.

Miriam grew up in Speyer, Germany in a musical family, learning the saxophone, guitar and singing in the gospel choir from an early age. She discovered her love of jazz at a jazz workshop in Germany, where she began transferring improvisational lines to her voice, which made her stand out as a vocal improviser early on. She continued to study a Bachelor's degree in both jazz singing and saxophone in Mainz, while also becoming a member of the German National Jazz Orchestra (BuJazzo) in 2012.

In 2014 she moved to London for her Masters at the prestigious Royal Academy of Music, where she studied under the tutelage of Pete Churchill, Nia Lynn, Stan Sulzmann and Norma Winstone. Graduating with distinction in 2016, she became part of the London Vocal Project under direction of Pete Churchill and started collaborating with British musicians Alex Merritt, Alcyona Mick, Sam Leak, Tori Freestone, Connor Chaplin and Stan Sulzmann beyond others, playing shows at the London Jazz Festival 2018 and 19. With her own band she performed at venues such as the 606 Club, Spice of Life, Vortex Jazz Club, The Lescar Sheffield, and Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club.

On her second album Tales & Tongues, released in May 2023 on Swiss label Unit Records, she presents jazz arrangements of European folk songs. With cellist Veit Steinmann and pianist Daniel Prandl, she creates bold soundscapes in which song composition is interwoven with intense improvisation. She wants to highlight the beauty of cultural diversity and openness with this concept album, drawing from special experiences of living and working in the international city of London.

"Ast manages the feat [...] of sounding authentic both as an interpreter of folk music and as a jazz singer." (Jazzpodium)

Miriam is now based in Stuttgart, Germany and quickly re-establishing herself in the German Jazz scene. This is making her a powerful force in connecting people from the British and German jazz scenes in new exciting band projects.