Ezinma

Ezinma was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, to a Guyanese father and German-American mother.[3] Her father is a professor of actuarial science,[4] while her mother is a creative non-fiction author and works as an English professor.[5][6] Ezinma started playing the violin at age three, and continued to play throughout school.[4] By junior high school, she felt alone as she was often the only black classical musician onstage,[5][7] and did not meet another black string musician until she was 13.[8] As a child, she listened to a wide range of music, including her funk, reggae, jazz, and Caribbean soca due to her father,[8] and Americana through her mother.[9]

Ezinma attended the University of Nebraska–Lincoln,[10] where she originally studied pre-med, before switching degrees to music.[11] At university, Ezinma formed a string and piano trio, and was mentored by members of the Chiara String Quartet.[12][13]

In 2012, Ezinma moved from Nebraska to New York to study at Mannes School of Music, the classical division of the New School,[14][7] which helped her see outside the rules of classical music.[11] Ezinma began releasing music featuring both her violin performance and vocals, and intended to release these songs on an extended play called I Am Ezinma in 2016.[11][15]

Ezinma began posting videos of her performing violin covers of songs to social media in 2016. Her first cover was a 15 second clip of Adele's "Hello" posted to Instagram.[4] During this time, Ezinma continued to release original music, such as "Elevate Me" in 2016,[16] and the instrumental "Give It Up" in 2017.[17]

In April 2017, Ezinma uploaded a cover of Future "Mask Off" as a part of a viral challenge featuring instrumental covers of the song.[18] Ezinma's version gained her millions of views across Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, and led to a sudden increase in her popularity.[3] American musician Beyoncé took notice of Ezinma's videos on social media (even before her version of "Mask Off"),[4] and invited her to perform as a part of Beyoncé's 2018 Coachella performance in April 2018.[8] Between 2017 and 2018, Ezinma appeared in modelling campaigns for Adidas,[19] Gap Inc.[20] and Gucci.[21]

In early 2019, Ramsay signed to Universal Music Classics.[22] She plans to release a classical-fusion album with hip-hop/trap influences in 2020, entitled Key of Black Minor, to be released alongside a documentary of her life.[4][8] Ramsay has worked as a film composer, scoring the soundtracks to the documentary film The Times of Bill Cunningham (2020),[23] and the Oluniké Adeliyi-starring short film Promise Me (2020).[24] In August, Ezinma released her debut single "Beethoven Pleads the Fifth".[25]

Ezinma partnered with Wide Open School, Re-Create (a program to provide educational content for public elementary schools in New York) and After-School All-Stars to create violin-related educational content for schools and after-school programs in the United States.[7]