Natalia Mateo / vocals
Gregor Lener / trumpet & effects
Simon Grote / piano
Dany Ahmad / guitars
Christopher Bolte / bass
Fabian Ristau / drums & percussion

“This voice has its own story to tell“, writes Die ZEIT about one of the new faces of modern jazz: Natalia Mateo. The 31 year-old vocalist is a wanderer between the worlds – musically and in real life. Presenting her ACT-debut “Heart of Darkness”, she invites to a thrilling musical journey where she draws from the Slavic ballad tradition, from American jazz and from contemporary pop and rock music.

“I always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go.”This quote from the 1899 short novel “Heart of Darkness” by Polish writer Joseph Conrad could also be Natalia Mateo’s philosophy of life. The 31 year-old vocalist is a wanderer between the worlds - musically and in real life. Born in Poland, raised in Austria and now living in Germany, she has absorbed the most varied of impressions and cultures into her being. She draws from the Slavic ballad tradition, from American jazz and singer-songwriters ranging from Joni Mitchell to Amy Macdonald, and from contemporary pop and rock music. Mateo’s music is a highly personal declaration of love to tradition and modernity, to familiarity on the one hand and on the other to the wanderlust throbbing in her heart and head, to the beauty of emotional attachment, of deepest interp...