VENNA - MELBOURNE - The Night Cat

Astral People Presents... ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ VENNA NOV 20 - MEL - THE NIGHT CAT ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ 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 Gadigal/Sydney, Strawberry Fields Festival and Naarm/Melbourne. A Grammy Award-winning South London saxophonist, producer and composer, his work resists the borders of any one genre or instrument, moving through UK rap, drill, hip-hop, jazz and soul with the quiet certainty of an artist led by instinct. For Venna, music has always felt less like a fixed category and more like a spiritual compass. Open-ended and deeply intuitive, his sound carries the feeling of one’s stream of consciousness. This is reflected across his growing body of work where he has established himself as a vessel for the uncontained, crafting musical worlds that feel boundless and creating space for his audience to craft their own emotional architecture. 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 Yussef Dayes, this is an intricate sculpture of experimentation and feeling, asking who can coexist in his world and how they can coexist together. Following the announcement of his Gadigal/Sydney headline show and newly revealed appearance at Strawberry Fields, Venna now expands his debut Australian tour with a headline show in Naarm/Melbourne this November. ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which this festival takes place, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation, and pay our respects to elders past and present. always was, always will be Aboriginal land.