ZERLINA DEVI

Zerlina Devi, originally from Bali, Indonesia is a pianist, vocalist, composer and arranger. Born in a family with no musical background and a deep appreciation for music, she and her siblings had to get their hands on instruments in their early childhood. At the age of four, she started learning piano and continued taking classical piano lessons since then. Along her young musical journey she also picked up the violin and would sing and accompany herself with her own piano playing.

Since she was a little girl, she has always shown her interest in jazz. She would listen to jazz records owned by her dad who has always been a big jazz fan. Her dad finally decided to introduce her to the jazz world by sending her to private lessons with several great jazz musicians in Indonesia. Music was just as influential in her childhood as anything else she learned at school and soon enough it became a big part of her life. This is when she started to fall in love with jazz and realized that she was able to express herself through music more than anything else could possibly do.

Eventually she started performing and she discovered her true passion, which is to perform in public. Even though the jazz scene back in her hometown was not thriving, she would find gigs regularly in café’s and restaurants back in her hometown and capitalized on every chance to perform including performing at her school events. Zerlina along with her band Sailendra Sextet, was the first winner at the longest standing, most renowned Jazz competition in Indonesia, Jazz Goes to Campus, where she also received the award of best pianist. She also had the great pleasure of playing in the jam session that is held at the biggest Indonesian International Jazz festival, Java Jazz Festival and collaborated with different remarkable musicians such as George Benson, Tony Monaco, Maurice Brown, Greg Fundis, Michael Paulo and many more. However, with all of the lessons she took and the experience she got from performing she was still lacking in the theoretical aspect of music because her previous teachers are self-taught musicians. She finally decided that she had to get access to more formal music educ