Ella Jazz Bar tunes Nicosia’s old town to a new beat
On a calm Thursday night in Nicosia’s old town, a bright “Ella” sign over a small stage marks the arrival of the city’s latest music venue. Ella Jazz Bar has taken over the former Winery site at Lykourgou 7 Street, offering a focused listening room where familiar names on the island’s jazz scene set the tone.
Inside, the space is cosy and dim, with small lamps on each table, jazz posters on the walls and warm shades of red and brown. The music is loud, the sound is clear. On Thursdays, the Charis Ioannou Quartet — Charis Ioannou, Marios Spyrou, Kyriakos Kesta and Christos Yerolatsitis — plays classic standards and improvisations.
Ioannou chats to the audience without a microphone, lending the night the ease of a living-room session. Fridays pivot to vinyl with DJ Harrycane (Ioannou under a different hat), while Saturdays, described as the busiest night of the week, bring the Charlotte Storer quintet and its powerhouse vocals.
The bar is the latest project from owner Marios Polycarpou, who has long worked in the old town. A former co-owner of Patio Cocktail Bar, he later worked at club Zoo just outside the Venetian Walls, which he has turned into MAP Boutique Hotel. He is also a musician.
“I wanted to open a jazz bar because I love the genre, I love the old town and after Patio, I wanted to return to these streets,” he said. Two years ago he picked up the saxophone after learning guitar 12 years earlier and joined a university jazz workshop led by Ioannou.
The experience, he said, pushed him to do more for jazz in Cyprus. “After a lot of research, I realized jazz is like fine dining, it is for about 10 per cent of people. They go on special occasions, anniversaries, that sort of thing. Maybe, they won’t even appreciate what it is they are eating.
It’s the same with jazz.” Polycarpou describes Ella as a personal passion project alongside his work at MAP. “Jazz is a very democratic language. When one speaks, the others stop and listen,” he said. When the bar opened, he joined a jam session on stage — a full-circle moment for a venue he says is meant to give musicians a quality sound experience in a room styled after classic spots in New York and Chicago.
Sound, he insists, was the starting point. He worked with a sound engineer, even testing the room with his saxophone, to tame a listed building’s high ceilings and lack of insulation. “The reverb was amazing. Suddenly, I found myself studying every material and how it behaved,” he said.
The goal is a balance: guests can talk at their tables and still hear the music clearly without disturbing the players. One practical outcome is a small but unusual policy — no cutlery. To avoid clatter, the bar serves finger food and tapas-style bites that require none.
For Polycarpou, Ella is an attempt to broaden the audience for a genre he admires while giving local musicians a stage designed for listening. With weekly sets, vinyl nights and tightly tuned acoustics, the venue is betting that more jazz in Nicosia is exactly what some ears have been waiting for.