Alexandra Ivanova

Three years after the release of her debut album, “BEAUTY IN CHAOS,” pianist and composer Alexandra Ivanova is opening new doors as a pioneer of different soundscapes.

With her trio, she has toured Europe and North Africa, playing in cities such as Berlin, Vienna, and Cairo. She received frenetic applause as a showcase at the world’s largest jazz fair, Jazzahead in Bremen. Immediately afterward, she gave a benefit concert in Berlin for the SOS Children’s Village in Moabit.

Alexandra Ivanova goes where she opens doors, whether it’s a big jazz fair or a small festival.

As “Artist in Residence” for three months, she opened 2024 in Havana/Cuba with a performance at the Havana Jazz Plaza Festival and played at the PENG Festival, among others.

In 2025, she took part in an intercultural “Soundweavings” residency at the Banff Centre in Canada, where Alexandra Ivanova performed on both the piano and the Arabic qanun. As always, new discoveries were made in the collaboration based on pieces of contemporary gamelan, whose composers are inspired by odd rhythms as well as Afro-Cuban music, and in some cases, also by maqam.

Alexandra Ivanova then traveled to Indonesia as a music ambassador for a month-long research and networking stay and began collaborating with contemporary Balinese composers.

An Asia-Oceania tour is now planned for 2026 as part of an interregional cultural collaboration between the Austrian embassies in Jakarta, Shanghai, and Canberra.

In many ways, her album “BEAUTY IN CHAOS” is a snapshot of a versatile and well-traveled composer and pianist, Alexandra Ivanova. It documents her decision to follow her personal calling to be a musician. It is also a kind of sanctuary, offering an oasis of belonging for people from all kinds of places.

In her compositions, Alexandra Ivanova combines sounds from Maqam traditions, Afro-Cuban claves, Bulgarian rhythms, and influences from both classical music and jazz. The title track features the unique voice of the Syrian-French vocalist, Lynn Adib.

The pieces on “Beauty in Chaos” invite the listener to leave the European canon and look at the world from different points of view. They search for easternness in a Western context. “Enta Omri”, for example, is a contemporary tribute to the legendary singer of Arabic classical music, Umm Kulthum. “Ay Isiginda” by Azerbaijani composer, Gambar Huseynli, is a piece that Ivanova initially heard at a concert by the Azerbaijan State Orchestra of Folk Instruments. The Icelandic traditional “Krummavisur” features striking parallels to the music of the Middle East.

With musicians like bass player  Niklas Lukassen and drummer Nathan Ott—both of whom she met in Berlin—she forms a top-class piano trio with sensitivity and authenticity. Her well-crafted album has opened up a new path for Alexandra Ivanova—she has created a home for herself in her music while also reflecting the wealth of her life experiences.