Zola Mennenöh
"From there I grow Branches"
"My relationship to the voice is sacred, it is my teacher, my compass, my portal to entering a world of truth, a universe that is raw, pure and real. Music is the language I understand best. The two together, a bridge from my most authentic self to the world. When I sing I become.
In recent years, my artistic expression has been drawn to softness and delicacy, a process of unarmored and opening. In calm and slow movements, creating a space for restoration, and, to vulnerably speak the truth. In my work, I look for subtlety and dissolving boundaries, for the unity of gentleness and strength, fluidity and clarity.
My work is autobiographical, revealing, layer by layer the mysteries of my heritage, the ancestral stories my body and soul carry, transforming the stories, the suffering, the grief into something beautiful. A recurring theme of my work is belonging and the quest of existing in harmony, both as an independent individual and a part of a community, built on trust and freedom. My work and my collaborations are a practice of that.
The voice is the centre of my work, and from there I grow branches to acoustic instruments, organic sounds, strings, fabrics, video and colours, more and more evolving into a multi-dimensional expression, with a minimal æsthetics."
Educated as both in classical and improvised music, her music oscillates freely between structure and freedom, simplicity and complexity, reduction and detailed richness, earthy directness and fine elegance. Her works and co-collaborations create multi-layered, genre- and discipline-bending cosmoses.
Her practice engages with questions of identity, memory, belonging and the limits and possibilities of personal expression through the voice and the body. She is deeply concerned about creating spaces for freedom and connectedness, empowerment and truth telling, equality and coexistence, transformation, alchemy and feeling.
In 2020 she released her debut album “Longing for belonging” on figureight records and got highly recognized by an international audience: A nomination for Deutscher Jazzpreis 2021 in the category Album Vokal National, as well as a listing by The Guardian as one of the “BEST NEW ARTISTS IN 2021. Her long-awaited 2nd Solo Album "A labour of Love" will be released in November 2025.
Zola Mennenöh collaborates closely with Shahzad Ismaily, Luka Aron, Sissi Rada, Halvcirkel, Max Andrzejewski.
She gained her BA from Jazz Institut Berlin, her MA (Music Performance) and her Advanced Postgraduate Soloist degree (Music Performance), both from the Rhythmic Music Conservatory Copenhagen.
Since 2023 she is a selected scholar from Stiftung Árvore. Zola Mennenöh is based in Köln.