Melissa Weikart and her piano have proceeded through life in step, from her early classical training to the experimental practice that defines her work today. Winner of the instrumentalist prize at the 2023 La Défense National Jazz Competition and the 2022 Nancy Jazz Pulsations emerging artist award, Franco-American musician Melissa Weikart has released two EPs and an album as a solo artist, in addition to an album and EP with producer Beatrice M. (Beatrice Melissa). A student of jazz and ’70s folk-pop, and a keen lover of improvisation since her time at the New England Conservatory in Boston, Weikart has always conjured the confessional candor of the singer-songwriter in her music, even as she dispenses her lyrics across rich, shifting, dreamlike tableaux.

 

On her new album, Contact, out October 2026 on Midnight Special Records, Weikart blends sounds and forms to push her sound further than ever before. Across twelve shifting and evocative tracks that examine the connective tissue binding us to ourselves and others, Weikart forges a rich dialogue artist and instrument, artist and self, and artist and listener—a testament to the power of relationality in an atomized world.

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