Vanessa Kourtesi is a vocalist, composer, lyricist and vocal educator originally from Athens and currently based in Rotterdam. The last decade she has been active in the world and folk music scene from Greece and the East Mediterranean. Vanessa is experimenting between her roots and new approaches in expressing herself, such asvstory-telling, languages, and other musical traditions. Her first EP composed and produced by her, “Spending time with Esther”(2022) is a story of two girls, Vanessa and Esther, who communicate through different time periods, creating a persona for one another. Passing through her east-Mediterranean roots to jazz and to improvisation, in her compositions she attempts to create images and narrate stories from her experiences and her imagination. At the moment she is working on her album which will be recorded in 2024. In her new work she experiments with her vocals, transmitting her musical background in her compositions and her improvisation and attempting to find new ways to bring together different musical worlds. Vanessa is the lead singer and composer in various projects such as Merem and the Circle Orchestra and she has also worked for motion picture and the theater. She is a graduate of Codarts Conservatory in Rotterdam, specialized in East Mediterranean music and a master student of University of Wales, researching performance anxiety in singing.