Venna

There are artists who arrive already formed, and others who seem to unfold in public, still becoming. Venna feels closer to the latter. This November, Venna brings that world to Sydney. A Grammy Award-winning South London saxophonist, producer, and composer, Venna has built a language that doesn’t sit neatly inside genre. It drifts between UK rap, drill, hip-hop, jazz and something more open-ended. Less a fusion than a flow state, resisting definition because it was never designed to be contained. He began playing piano at six and took up the alto saxophone at twelve, early enough for music to feel instinctive rather than learned. Since then, Venna’s saxophone and musical sensibility have moved through a widening circle of contemporary artists. His horn work is most clearly heard on