ABOUT
Classically trained pianist, vocalist, singer/songwriter, composer, arranger and producer Macha Gharibian first discovered her own musical universe through immersing herself in the New York jazz scene. With Armenian ancestry, a Parisian heart, and a New Yorker by adoption, her music is an intricate blend of all these influences.
Her debut album Mars (2013), was an immediate success, followed by Trans Extended (2016) and Joy Ascension (2020), both critically acclaimed. Awarded by the Victoires du Jazz in 2020, Macha Gharibian has performed on international stages: Montreux, Ottawa, New York, São Paulo, Bogotá, Moscow, Yerevan, Beijing, Shanghai… From prestigious festivals to iconic venues like Salle Pleyel and Olympia, she has traveled the world with her music.
Borrowing its name from a poem by the great Maya Angelou, her fourth album ‘Phenomenal Women’ spotlights her voice as an ode to life and testament to feminine power. Captivated by a video of Angelou reciting her poem in London in 1987, Gharibian found herself urged to pay musical tribute to the poet, and to the strength of all women.
Influenced by the school of ‘natural vocalists’ in Nina Simone, Jeanne Lee and Joni Mitchell, Macha Gharibian’s luminescent energy leads her listener through a delicately varied tonal palette of celebration, prayer, joy, and melancholy.
Drawing from the music of her childhood—especially her father’s voice (Dan Gharibian, co-founder of the group Bratsch), which she heard singing in Armenian, Russian, Greek, and Romani—Gharibian blends her personal cultural heritage with contemporary styles, singing in five languages on Phenomenal Women, embracing the inflections of English, Armenian, French, Portuguese and Arabic with undeniable ease.
In 2023, she was appointed Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters, a recognition she celebrates with the release of her fourth album, Phenomenal Women, on January 24th, 2025.
A stage and studio artist, Macha Gharibian also writes for the theater and composes film scores, collaborating with directors such as Simon Abkarian, Steve Faigenbaum, Nicolas Tackian, Delphine Morel, and Benjamin Nakache.
Constantly reinventing her own universe, she invites us to journey through hers.
