Welcome NSEMC Awards Emcee: Zola Jesus

This year’s NSEMC Awards Emcee will be Zola Jesus. Tune in on Friday, Oct. 30 at 7 p.m. Eastern to hear Zola announce the winners of this year’s National Student Production Awards!

Nika Roza Danilova has been recording and performing as Zola Jesus for more than a decade. As a classically trained opera singer with a penchant for noisy, avant-garde sounds, she launched her career with a series of lo-fi releases that pitted her soaring vocals against harsh industrial clatter and hittery synths. The signature Zola Jesus sound became more hi-fi as she began to explore her own skewed vision of pop music on releases like Stridulum, Valusia, and Conatus. With the release of Conatus, Danilova was propelled to regular appearances on festival stages around the world, as well as a special performance at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. That era culminated in the release of Versions, a collection of string quartet interpretations of her most beloved work, conducted by J.G. Thirlwell (Foetus). That album and subsequent tour were followed by her most hi-fi outing to date, Taiga. Coinciding with her return both to the Wisconsin Woods in which she was raised and her longtime label, Sacred Bones Records, Zola Jesus produced Okovi, her darkest album yet which she followed with Okovi: Additions which included a remix of “Ash to Bone” by Johnny Jewel which prompted his additional remix of “Wiseblood”. Earlier this year Danilova’s stand out set from Roadburn 2018 was released as a live record and she is now working on her seventh full length album.

Check out the full list of special guests for the NSEMC on the Sessions and Speakers pages, and register today to attend the 2020 NSEMC from the comfiness of your couch.