Petra Nachtmanova was born in Vienna to a Polish mother and a Czech father. Since her early childhood she has been exposed to different cultures and styles of music, always searching for the connecting elements between them. Her musical paths have led her from being a young Oboe player in the capital of Classical Music through singing Renaissance and Baroque music in England, participating in the local Chinese Pop Idol in Ningbo, Bulgarian Polyphonic choirs, getting involved with Anatolian Bağlama Music as far as getting a taste of the Persian Radif Tradition.



As a singer and as a researcher of folk music and poetry Petra focuses on Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East. Living in Berlin since 2008 she has sung with the Bulgarian Folk Ensembles Bulgarian Voices Berlin and Peperuda, and she has been a founding member of the Berliner bands Tralalka and OKO playing traditional Eastern European songs in new arrangements.

Her work on Anatolian Music and the Bağlama has been developing since 2010. Since then she has represented Austria in the International TRT Türkcevizyon Festival 2014 in Denizli, performed on ITV Public Television in Azerbaijan, the Turkish Radio Metropol FM, Kanal Avrupa, YolTV, Deutsche Welle, SWR2 MusikGlobal and played hundreds of concerts in the Anatolian Communities in Germany, France, Belgium and in Turkey. She was working together with the film director Stephan Talneau on the ARTE documentary film project about the Bağlama and related instruments, SAZFilm.

Petra is also a member of the Electronic Project Karmatürji, creating electronic music with traditional content from Anatolia and Eastern Europe with the multi-instrumentalist Ceyhun Kaya and Dj Ipek Ipekcioglu. In 2016 they recorded the Single Track “Uyan uyan” which landed on No.1 of the Berliner Electronic Music Label Katermukke.
Petra is fluent in German, Polish, Czech, Turkish, English, French, Italian and Russian and able to communicate and work in other related languages.

At WERKSTATT DER KULTUREN she curates concerts for the series WorldWideMusic in october 2019.

The WERKSTATT DER KULTUREN is funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe.