Dafna Levi – vocalist
Ventsi Blagoev – trumpet
“For me, jazz is something like Tao – a path we create in motion, a path to healing and connection, a path along which I touch people and express my essence,” Dafna Levi likes to say. She is defined as a singer with a rare sensitivity and a rich inner world, which is reflected in the music she creates and performs.
Dafna Levi was born and raised in Tel Aviv. Her family has been deeply connected to the spiritual roots of music for generations, so a passion for expression through music is literally encoded in her DNA. When she was 10, Dafna went to a gospel choir concert, which made her realize that singing was her calling. She has a master’s degree in Eastern philosophy and her journey in the world of music is defined by the spiritual freedom that meditation provides.
Dafna Levi doesn’t just sing, she tells stories, using her voice with ease on many levels. Vocally, she is a master of contrasts, she can sing extremely deep and powerful, and the next moment her voice becomes soft and alluring, full of bliss and blues. When she sings, the listener hears every word and every message. Music critics often compare her to Sarah Vaughan, mostly because of her seemingly natural sense of improvisation. Dafna Levi not only sings, she writes many of her own songs and arranges them. For almost 20 years, Dafna Levi has been the soloist of the Hed Big Band (created by Yehuda Cohen, a graduate of Berklee College, a group with a rich concert activity, that collaborates with musicians of the rank of Michel Legrand).
The specific and very characteristic style of Dafna Levi makes her a welcome guest at a number of festivals and music forums such as the jazz festivals in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Expo World Fair, Wichita Jazz Festival (Kansas, USA) and others.
Dafna Levi is a certified teacher of jazz singing, an aspect of her life that she loves very much, as well as a certified Theta Healing instructor.
She loves to expand the musical territories in which he performs, to mix and blur the boundaries between genres. This passion of hers is the basis of the new projects in which Dafna Levi mixes jazz, classical and electronic music.