RAMONA HORVATH

Born in Bucharest to a Romanian mother and a Hungarian father, Ramona grew up surrounded by music.
She discovered jazz at an early age through Willis Conover’s Jazz Hour on Voice of America, while also absorbing American songs, traditional and Gypsy music, Cuban boleros and classical music.
She began playing piano by ear at three, entered music school at six, and earned her classical piano soloist diploma from the Bucharest National University of Music at 23.

At the end of her studies, she met Hungarian-Romanian born American pianist Jancy Korossy, an icon of international jazz behind the Iron Curtain in the 1950s and ’60s. This decisive encounter led her fully into jazz, and the two pianists performed together on European stages for several years.

In 2010, Ramona moved to Paris, where she formed a trio with bassist Guillaume Duvignau and drummer Frédéric Sicart. In 2012, began her long-standing collaboration with double bassist Nicolas Rageau. Her first trio album, XS Bird (2015, Black&Blue), dedicated to Jancy Korossy, received the Romanian Jazz Album of the Year award. It was followed by Lotus Blossom (2017), a more Ellingtonian quartet album, and Le Sucrier Velours (2019), her acclaimed duo with Nicolas Rageau, which further established her as a distinctive voice on the Paris jazz scene.

In 2023, she released Carmen’s Karma, a trio album bringing together jazz and classical music in a highly personal and eclectic way, and widely praised by the international press.

In recent years, Ramona has performed on prestigious stages across Europe, in both jazz and classical contexts. An artist embodying the vitality of the Romanian diaspora, she has also represented Romania on several official European cultural occasions. In 2021, TVR International dedicated a filmed portrait to her.