Santa Šillere
Santa Šillere is a jazz vocalist from Latvia. Growing up in a musical family, she began singing and playing piano at an early age. She graduated from Jelgava Music College as a choir conductor and then earned a master’s degree in jazz singing from the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music. In 2018, as part of the Erasmus+ programme, she studied in Anna Gadt’s class at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice (Poland). Šillere has also participated in many masterclasses with jazz artists, including Lisa Popeil, Lenora Helm Hammonds, Helle Henning, Peter Hertmans, and Lorenz Kellhuber. At the age of 16, she began performing with the Jelgava Big Band, at which point she began learning more about jazz – music she now cannot imagine her life without. Šillere has participated in the Koru Kari 3 television show, the Lāčplēsis rock opera, and also the Saulkrasti Jazz festival (Latvia), the Birštonas Jazz Festival (Lithuania), and the Girls Power in Jazz festival (Denmark). Šillere mostly performs with bands playing jazz standards as well as her own arrangements of popular music and her original compositions.