Melissa Weikart makes music to heal, airing out self-grievances and finding deeper answers to the riddles of life. Born in Paris, the singer and keyboardist came up in Boston, and relocated to France four years ago. Her music has since garnered national attention—she is the recipient of the Nancy Jazz emerging artist prize in 2022, and the Concours National de Jazz à la Défense instrumentalist prize in 2023. “There was a dissonance between these two cultures and how I conceived of the world,” she admits. It’s not surprising, then, that her music is singular and unusual, often marked by dissonant chords and layers of surreal, divinatory vocals. In Boston, she met the avant-garde pianist Ran Blake while studying at the New England Conservatory. “He taught me not to just fit into a particular style. Rather, to reflect on my inspirations and create my own musical setting,” she says. Weikart has done just this. Through multidisciplinary collaborations with composer Carla Kihlstedt and the left-field electropop of Beatrice Melissa, her duo with DJ-producer Beatrice M., Weikart has immersed herself in a myriad of genres and aesthetics, so that with Easy, she returns to her roots, but with an elevated new sound, incorporating electronic beats and field recordings that remind of us just how far she’s traveled to get here. 

 

Weikart has always been driven by an experimental ethos that shapes her hybrid approach to music-making. Improvisation may be her watchword, but her songs are nonetheless inflected by the effortless euphoria of pop music, while treating her audience to constant wonder and surprise. Able to evoke love in all its kitschiness and fragility and to claim the voice as a true instrument, Melissa Weikart displays all her finesse and delicacy, delighting hearts, at every moment, without you expecting it. Her new EP, Easy, will be released January 2025.