From Vision to Reality: Meet the 2025 Roundhouse Resident Artists

YAZ is a South East London-based singer whose music bridges her Palestinian roots with the city’s vibrant contemporary jazz scene. Born in France and raised trilingually—Arabic, French, and English—she crafts a sound that is both intimate and expansive, drawing on the richness of her cultural background. Influenced by artists like Fairuz, Yebba and the storytelling tradition of French chanson, YAZ creates music that explores themes of grief, memory, and emotional resilience. Her lyrics, rooted in Arab poetic traditions, unfold over immersive, spacious soundscapes that resonate with emotional depth.

She has performed at renowned venues such as Ronnie Scott’s, St Pancras Old Church, The Tabernacle, and the Southbank Centre.

Hana Amaya is a London-based singer and trumpet player who plays with feeling and softness. Her sound is both sensitive and self-assured, weaving through alt-R&B, ambient textures, and indie soul. With a strong focus on sonic world-building, Hana draws inspiration from rich, feminine atmospheres - places like the sea, the tides, and the moon. These natural elements find their way into her music through field recordings and samples. Working as a session musician, Hana has performed across a range of projects, including work with BBC Radio 6, NYX, and Vox Urbane. She was also named a runner-up in Cross the Tracks’ Emerging Artist competition and has earned recognition from artists she deeply admires, such as Hiatus Kaiyote, Nai Palm, Gretchen Parlato, Cherise, Nubiyan Twist, Ego Ella May, Ruby Francis, and Shai Maestro.

Now stepping into her solo career, Hana’s debut single ‘Blue Room’ marks a bold and intimate beginning. The track has already received airplay on BBC Radio 6’s Dreamtime with Zakia, an early glimpse of what’s ahead. With a collaborative EP on the horizon and more singles in the works, Hana is ready to step fully into her own sound - and run with it.

Emmeline's unique blend of spoken word and alternative hip-hop has marked her as one of East London's rising poetic souls. Making music that traverses both speech, song, and that mystical in-between, she has made a name for herself on the UK's performance poetry circuit as well as at underground cyphers and beat showcases. After meeting super producer Fraser T Smith (producing for the likes of Dave, Adele, Stormzy) in late 2021, the pair began to collaborate on releasing music, resulting in two EPs with tracks that featured Kojey Radical, and were then performed on tour, when Emmeline opened for The Streets in 2022.

Named one of The Guardian’s ‘Ones to Watch’ and The Line of Best Fit’s ‘On the Rise’, Emmeline has since signed with indie hip-hop label Lewis Recordings to release her own mixtape, the product of a year spent experimenting musically with emerging producers across London. In 2025, she headed to Texas to play SXSW, as well as developed a community showcase for women and non-binary people in music. She is also an active writer, with several longform literary projects in the works.

TOBITHEFREAK is a South London-born Nigerian artist, producer, DJ and multi-instrumentalist, carving out a unique sonic space with his self-coined genre, “moody blue” (alt-electronic R&B). Unbound by traditional classifications, he blends elements of electronic soundscapes, soulful R&B, and alternative experimentation, adding a bounce synonymous with black music throughout. TOBITHEFREAK writes, produces, mixes, and masters his music independently, often incorporating live instrumentation into his tracks, pulling on influences such as Steve Lacy, Sampha, Frank Ocean, and Blood Orange.

The artist is working towards releasing a full-length project In 2025, “Just because I write about you, doesn't mean I care” beginning a pivot towards live performance.

lulu melons is the moniker under which East London-based songwriter and producer Rahul Menon releases delicate, thought-provoking alternative folk music. Since the project's inception in 2024, fans have gravitated towards lulu's ear-catching blend of vulnerable lyrics and lush instrumentation, earning placements on line-ups in some of London’s most iconic venues.

2024's 'Heads' saw the project reach new heights as it was featured on Spotify's 'Fresh Finds Folk' editorial playlist. Now a Roundhouse Resident Artist, lulu is looking to the future and their debut full-length project. For fans of: Sufjan Stevens, Adrianne Lenker, Elliott Smith, Bon Iver.

Cardamon Rozzi (or ‘Carδamo’) is an artist/producer based in London, whose practice explores themes of identity, trauma, and liberation. Cardamon’s work is built on the foundation of Classical and Jazz musical studies, having been recognised in their adolescence as a well-respected orchestral Violinist and Saxophonist. However, they departed from the traditional music path to pursue music that felt less "polite". Their music draws from a wide range of influences, from Λαϊκό to Hardcore, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to Dido. Cementing their work in the canon of other queer contemporaries, Carδamo invites listeners to engage with their own emotional landscapes and experiences of self-discovery.

Having worked independently as a freelancer in all facets of the music industry, Carδamo seeks to carve a space for themselves unapologetically, while encouraging others to do the same. Cardamon currently teaches at ICMP and aims to further continue a parallel career in academia.

MyselfBlaize (Blaize Alexis-Anglin) is a North London-based poet, performer, and storyteller. Crafting poetry that feels like memory and moves like music, their poetry has taken them from the Houses of Parliament to Los Angeles, with commissions and performances rooted in truth, legacy, and emotional clarity. Whether it is collaborating with Save the Children or curating spaces through their creative platform House of Vox, Blaize is committed to storytelling that heals, remembers, and redefines. Through performance, curation, and conversation, Blaize continues to shift how poetry is seen and where it lives, centring stillness, excellence, and cultural truth in every space they step into.

Thea is a Romanian emerging artist currently based in London, driven by an innate craving for non-conformity, child-like wonder, and a strong sense of justice. Known for her dynamic and distinctly personal spoken word style, she made herself known in the London poetry scene by performing thought-provoking, emotional pieces and placing in some of the most important slams across the city. Having a background in journalism and hard sciences, her work engages with complex stories involving injustice, multilingualism, cultural trauma and explores identity on a linguistic level.


Alongside being a Resident artist, Thea is also developing her first solo performance taking place within the Voila Theatre Festival 2025. The piece navigates multilingualism, corruption in the justice system and the migrant experience.

Santi Tonauac Castro (he/him) is an Indigenous Mexican-Cuban 2spirit artist.

Santi weaves doom-jazz-chaos bombs in the shape of plays, poems, and performance. He is a decolonial border challenger, a traditional Aztec danzante, and a tattooed sweetheart.

In 2023, his play MANFLOR won a BIPOC New Work Grant with Cannonball Fest produced in the Philadelphia Fringe. His play BLACK LUNG AND ALSO IF was featured in the 24-Hour Plays Fest at Interact Theatre. His play GENTE DEL SOL was showcased in PlayPenn’s 2022 Annual New Play Festival and made the 2023 Kilroys List. A previous member of PlayPenn’s inaugural Playwrights Cohort and a 2019 YoungArts Playwriting Winner, Santi has worked with The Arden and Quintessence Theatre, 1812 Productions, Taller Puertoriqueño, Mural Arts, and the Philadelphia Art Museum. Santi attended UArts majoring in playwriting and minoring in sculpture! He is attending Rose Bruford studying from 2024-2025 toward his MA in Queer Performance and afterwards will be attending Kingston University for an MFA in Creative Writing from 2025-2027.

When he’s not studying, you can catch him working at the National Gallery, or doing drag/performance art in London!

Rosie Robertson is a cheeky yet considered writer and performer currently living and working in London. She moved to Glasgow from her home in Stirlingshire and completed three years of training at Dance Studio Scotland before moving down to London to complete her degree at London Contemporary Dance School. Here, her practice broadened, and she became interested in the intersection between dance movement and spoken performance. Over this time, Rosie has toured with The National Youth Dance Company of Scotland, performed twice at the Edinburgh Fringe and most recently was part of Eva Recacha’s new work ‘The Picnic’ at LBS, Sadlers Wells. Rosie’s own interests have been shaped by the broad range of practices and practitioners she has encountered over the last few years, with play and curiosity becoming two of her key artistic values. Her work is informed by her upbringing in Scotland: its natural and wild beauty; traditional word, dance and song; unique social and cultural landscape; and its deeply complex political positioning.

Over her residency, Rosie aims to make a work that holds the writing and speaking aspects of her practice as highly as the dance and movement.