About Nadiia Zhurba

“There was always music at home, and it never went away.”

Nadiia Zhurba is a jazz pianist and composer based in Mainz. She studies jazz piano in the class of Sebastian Sternal at the Mainz School of Music. She first sat down at the piano aged five, in a family where everyone played and which ran its own jazz school in Ukraine. Her training began at the R. Glier Music Academy in Kyiv; since 2022, Mainz has been home.

She is happiest playing with others: she leads her Nadiia Zhurba Trio, shares the stage with her family in the Early Bird Family Band and with the quintet “On the Way”, and gives solo concerts alongside. She has performed at the Staatstheater Mainz and Frankfurt’s Jazzkeller, the oldest active jazz club in Europe, among others.

Her work has been supported several times over: she is a two-time Deutschlandstipendium scholar (2024/25 and 2025/26) and received the Rotary Cultural Promotion Award in 2024. In 2026 she was admitted to the Junge Akademie of the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz, which brings together young researchers and artists for four years of interdisciplinary exchange.