Venna

About

There are artists who arrive already formed, and others who seem to unfold in public, still becoming. Venna feels closer to the latter. This November, Venna brings that world to Melbourne.

A Grammy Award-winning South London saxophonist, producer, and composer, Venna has built a language that doesn’t sit neatly inside genre. It drifts between UK rap, drill, hip-hop, jazz and something more open-ended. Less a fusion than a flow state, resisting definition because it was never designed to be contained.

He began playing piano at six and took up the alto saxophone at twelve, early enough for music to feel instinctive rather than learned. Since then, Venna’s saxophone and musical sensibility have moved through a widening circle of contemporary artists. His horn work is most clearly heard on Burna Boy’s Alarm Clock from the Grammy Award-winning Twice As Tall, while his broader creative presence has shaped projects alongside Wizkid, Knucks and longtime collaborator Yussef Dayes. Whether audible or unseen, Venna’s contribution often lives in the atmosphere of the record, shaping tone and feeling without asking to be foregrounded.

Now, with his debut album MALIK, that presence turns inward. The album moves like a conversation with that identity. Featuring Jorja Smith, Leon Thomas, Smino, MIKE, Cari, and Venna himself, MALIK dissolves the edges between player, producer, composer and voice. Built with collaborators including Rocco Palladino, Elijah Fox, AoD, J Warner, Marco Bernardis and…