Nina Miranda

Nina Miranda is both a singer and songwriter who was part of the English group, Smoke City, and more recently, Shrift.

Nina Miranda's father is Brazilian, her mother is English and she was born in Brazil, and educated in Brazil, England and France. She wanted to be an opera singer when she was younger, and then studied art.

Nina is daughter to Brazilian visual artist Luiz Aquila.

In 1992 Nina recorded a song called Underwater Love, with DJ and musician Marc Brown. The song was moody and cinematic, trip hop fused with Bossa Nova. Nina sang it using English with a French accent and Brazilian Portuguese. The track was featured in a successful Levi's ad campaign, became an underground hit and caught the attention of several major record labels.

Marc and Nina joined forces with musician and producer Chris Franck and the three became Smoke City. Smoke City released an album on Jive records called Flying Away to great critical acclaim. The band had created a unique blend of jazz, samba, trip hop, reggae, dub, folk and bossa. The album spawned top ten hit singles including a number one.

They extensively played the major venues and festivals all over UK and Europe, and in 2001 released a second album in the UK called Heroes Of Nature. Smoke City's songs other writing collaborations Nina has been involved with are continuously used on films, TV and advertising world-wide. According to a podcast in their new band ZEEP's myspace website, they state that because of record label pressure on Smoke City, they decided to end the band.

Nina Miranda has worked with a variety of artists, and has guested on tracks for Da Lata, Nitin Sawhney, Cirque du Soleil, Bebel Gilberto, Daniel Jobim, Antonio Chainho, Shrift, Spiller, Faze Action, Jah Wobble, Les Gammas, Troubleman, Arkestra 1, Hajime Yoshizawa and Robert Miles.






With Somoke City: