Alexandra Ivanova

Born to Bul­gar­i­an par­ents in Aus­tria, Alexan­dra Ivano­va grew up curi­ous to meet and under­stand the ‘Oth­er’ — in her­self, in soci­ety or in cul­ture. In her com­po­si­tions, Alexan­dra cre­ates con­ver­sa­tions between jazz, Maqam-based and Afro-Cuban music and odd polyrhythms. Her arrange­ments reflect her expe­ri­ence liv­ing on three con­ti­nents and speak­ing six lan­guages flu­ent­ly. Alexan­dra Ivano­va is an uncon­ven­tion­al musi­cian who invites the lis­ten­er to look at the world from dif­fer­ent points of view: from the East, the West or from some­where in between.

Clas­si­cal­ly trained in Aus­tria since the age of eight, she dis­cov­ered her pas­sion for jazz at six­teen and has been men­tored by Lebanese-Amer­i­can jazz pianist and award-win­ning com­pos­er Tarek Yamani. Alexan­dra stud­ied jazz piano in Aus­tria, at the Region­al Con­ser­va­to­ry in Dijon, the Con­ser­va­toire Erik Satie in Paris, as a music schol­ar at the UK’s Uni­ver­si­ty of War­wick Music Center.

She toured Egypt, Sau­di Ara­bia, Ger­many, Aus­tria and Ice­land with her trio and has fur­ther per­formed in the Cairo Jazz Fes­ti­val 2023, Reyk­javik Jazz Fes­ti­val 2020, the Offi­cial UNESCO Online Edu­ca­tion Pro­gramme of the Inter­na­tion­al Jazz Day 2020, BIX Jaz­zclub Stuttgart, Zig Zag Jazz Club Berlin, the Men­gi Reyk­javik, Stock­w­erk Graz, the New York Uni­ver­si­ty Abu Dhabi Arts Cen­ter, the House of Pianos Dubai and the Cité Inter­na­tionale Paris, among others.

Alexan­dra holds a Master’s degree in Eco­nom­ics and Busi­ness from the Paris Insti­tute for Polit­i­cal Sci­ences (Sci­ences Po Paris) and writes spo­ken word poetry.