There is a philosophy embedded in the title of Uta Habbig’s new album that says everything about what kind of artist she is. Another Sky — even a dark sky is at some point followed by another sky, which always gives us a new perspective. It is not optimism as denial. It is persistence as faith. And across ten original compositions that blend jazz, chamber pop, and classical music into something that feels entirely her own, Habbig earns that philosophy note by note.
This is deeply personal work — music conceived as a place of refuge, an invitation to experience sound as shelter. Habbig’s compositions hold their complexity lightly, offering intricate harmonies that never sacrifice accessibility, and profound lyricism that never becomes opaque. The album moves between consolation and inspiration, vulnerability and strength, dreaming and reckoning, with the ease of someone who has spent a lifetime learning how all of those things coexist.
In ten original compositions, Habbig explores the coexistence of dreams, longings and the challenges of life — music that offers snapshots of vulnerability and strength, captivating through complex harmonies with yet accessible melodies and profound lyricism.
The album’s guest musicians elevate rather than crowd. American jazz pianist Glenn Zaleski appears on Seasons and All That I Can See, where his sensitivity in duo is precisely calibrated to Habbig’s vocal presence. Danish jazz trumpeter Ari Kárason solos on Dreams and Petite Chanson with the kind of virtuosity that sounds inevitable rather than impressive. The ensemble — Franky Rousseau on guitar and production, Adi Meyerson on bass, Dominic Mekky on piano, Connor Parks on drums — is, as the press notes put it, tailor-made for the interpretation of her compositions. Listening, you believe it.
Uta Habbig’s biography reads like a deliberate education in everything music can be. Born in Cologne, she began playing piano and violin at five — by the time she reached conservatory level study, she had already performed at the Gewandhaus Leipzig and onto the stage of Carnegie Hall with a choir project. Her formal training took her through the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in Leipzig, the Maastricht Conservatory of Music where she earned a B.M. in Jazz, and finally the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City.
At the New School she studied under Reggie Workman, Kirk Nurock, and Becca Stevens — three figures whose combined influence covers the full spectrum of what jazz singing and composition can achieve. That education shows in her work. Another Sky is not a genre exercise. It is the product of an artist who has absorbed multiple disciplines so thoroughly that she no longer thinks of them as separate.
Now based in New York City, Habbig teaches at NYU and other cultural and educational institutions while continuing to write, record, and perform. The teaching and the making are not separate activities. They are the same conversation, conducted in different rooms.
Another Sky is the work of a musician who has earned the right to make exactly the album she wanted to make. It is unhurried, uncompromising, and quietly extraordinary. Habbig does not reach for anything here — she simply arrives, fully formed, with ten compositions that justify every year of the journey that produced them.
Even a dark sky is followed by another sky. This album is proof of that — and proof that the perspective it offers was worth waiting for.
