Karsu

Karsu Demirel, known professionally as Karsu, is a singer, pianist and composer born in Amsterdam in 1990 to Turkish parents. Her bicultural background shapes her music, which blends jazz, pop and Turkish influences, often performed and recorded in both English and Turkish. She built her career in the Netherlands, developing a reputation as a striking live performer capable of moving fluidly between languages and emotional registers on stage.

Her debut album «Confession» (2012) established her as a distinctive voice on the Dutch scene, earning strong reviews from critics who praised both her songwriting and vocal power. She followed it with «Colors» (2015), a record that broadened her palette while keeping the intimate, jazz-inflected core of her sound, and which won her recognition including an audience award tied to Dutch jazz culture. Songs like «Jest Oldu», «Siyah», «Bırak Beni Böyle» and «İtiraf» reflect the Turkish-language side of her catalogue, while pieces such as «Reloading My Mind» and «Like a Fool» show her English-language, pop-jazz leanings.

Beyond the studio, Karsu is known for ambitious theatrical live projects, including the «Play My Strings» stage show, in which she reworked her material into a deeper narrative concert experience. She has performed at major international venues, including multiple appearances at Carnegie Hall in New York and at the North Sea Jazz Festival, cementing her status as one of the more genre-crossing artists to emerge from the Dutch-Turkish cultural space.