LUAH

In 2017, Cologne-based singer-songwriter Elsa Johanna Mohr founded her trio LUAH with Lena-Larissa Senge and Ula Martyn-Ellis. Their paths crossed at the Institute of Music at Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences, where Mohr and Senge studied jazz singing and Martyn-Ellis jazz guitar. ‘Sunlit’, the debut of their vocal trio expanded with percussion, guitar and mandolin, was released in 2019, and the album ‘Movimento’ was honoured with the German Jazz Award in 2023. While a polyphonic eclecticism was already evident there, an eloquent, aesthetically diverse creative cosmos is now unfolding, in which Afro-Brazilian rhythms rub shoulders with smooth arrangements of polyglot pop and the authentic themes of modern jazz. The vocals switch casually from English to Portuguese and back again, the three friends alternate ingeniously between lively celebração and yearning saudade and tell stories of profound encounters and fleeting meetings.