INFO
| Name | Nikita 雅涵 Tu-Bryant (she/her) |
| Also known as | Nikita Tu, Kita, Ya-Han |
| Country of Birth | Taiwan |
| Place of Residence | Pōneke Wellington |
| Ethnicities | Taiwanese, Pākehā |
| Artform | Music, Screen, Theatre |
| Decades Active | 2010s, 2020s |
ABOUT
Nikita 雅涵 Tu-Bryant is a musician, actor, writer, and director based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. She aims to bridge people through intimate, emotionally-driven stories about love and identity, and is best known as the front person for the psychedelic pop trio, •KITA•, which has featured at WOMAD and Splore.
Tu-Bryant was born in Taipei and moved to Tāmaki Makaurau when she was four years old. She was first introduced to music at the age of five through violin lessons, and at age 10, her father introduced her to the electric guitar. She was brought up on her father’s taste in blues and rock music. Later, she also learnt to play guzheng, sanshin, and ukulele.
Tu-Bryant and her sister grew up in East Auckland in the early 2000s, attending Macleans College. She said that, at the time, there weren’t many Asian artists taking the stage and there were few role models to look up to, so she tended to gravitate towards cultural activities like kapa haka. Her Pākehā father and Taiwanese mother were both supportive of her artistic pursuits, even though her mother was “more traditional”.
As a young person, Tu-Bryant wrote her own songs and performed at pubs, leading to her winning best vocalist at Smokefreerockquest in 2005. When she was 15, she was introduced to composer and musician Godfrey de Grut, who helped her arrange her music and get her first NZ On Air grant.
It wasn’t until her 20s that she started embracing her culture, but her experiences of othering and internalised racism became influential in her writing. She believes connecting people through storytelling is “gentler” and her preferred way of being an activist:
After high school, she moved to Te Whanganui-a-Tara to study jazz at the New Zealand School of Music. While realising that jazz wasn’t the direction she wanted to pursue, it was there that she met other musicians like Ed Zuccollo and Rick Cranson, who would later join her to form FLITE, eventually becoming psychedelic retro pop trio •KITA•.
Her first song as a career musician was written in Mandarin with her cinematic folk band, Nikita the Spooky and a Circus of Men. The song, ‘Tide Waits For No Man’ (2013), was about the estranged grief she felt when her great-uncle passed away, and this story would later become her theatre show, Tide Waits for No Man: Episode GRACE (2018). Hye Ji Lee described the work as “rich with powerful symbolism” and “a compelling portrayal of much of the confusion, ambivalence and conflict we experience as a result of existing between cultures and generations.”
While playing in bands like Mara and The Bushkas and The Pyramid Scheme, she also released music under her solo artist name, Nikita 雅涵 Tu-Bryant. Her first album [Before & After, JOSHUA] (2016) was about a love story between her and someone she met in 2015 on a plane. The two connected instantly and decided to meet again to go on a trip to Joshua Tree National Park, which the album was named after. The couple continued to meet, and when the relationship fell apart, Tu-Bryant wrote the album to process her grief, “without really intending [for] many people to hear”. For the 10th anniversary of the encounter, Tu-Bryant played [Before & After, JOSHUA] at the 2025 Auckland Live Cabaret Festival. In 2020, •KITA• debuted their first EP, Try to Find a Way. Their music “bonds folk and soul, with lyrical funk guitars, lush moog synth and Fender Rhodes from Zuccollo, driven by a dirty, psychedelic drumbeat, courtesy of Cranson”.
In addition to her musical career, Tu-Bryant has acted in theatre productions, films and TV shows, including Avatar: The Way of Water (2022), Sister, Please (2018), and Far North (2023). She also directed and starred in a four-part film LOVE LIVES HERE // 愛住在這裡 (2025), which builds on •KITA•’s 2023 4-track EP, with each part exploring different kinds of love:
Working predominantly with other Asian creatives in Aotearoa, the film features a new score. Speech features minimally in the film, but when it does, it uses Mandarin, Māori, and English.
Tu-Bryant cares deeply about the environment, and all her work is low-waste. Props and costumes for films and shows are sourced from the tip shop and returned. In 2024, along with Sharn Te Pou, Tu-Bryant was the headline act for the 2024 World of WearableArt show.
LINKS
Key works / presentations
2024 — World of WearableArt, headliner
Albums:
2021 — KITA, •KITA•
2016 — [Before & After, JOSHUA], Nikita 雅涵 Tu-Bryant
2013 — Big Sur, Nikita the Spooky and a Circus of Men
2012 — Live at Happy, Nikita the Spooky and a Circus of Men
EPs:
2024 — The John Landreth Project (as music facilitator, producer and director)
2023 — Love Lives Here EP, •KITA•
Compositions:
2023 — Happiness Is The Path
2023 — Sik Fan Lah!
2019 — Tales of Nai Nai
2019 — Pinay
2016 — Call Of The Sparrows
As a visual artist:
2025 — Waypeople, Hannah Playhouse, Pōneke (sonic and visual show)
In film and theatre:
2025 — The Whole Thing (as lead), New Zealand Film Commission
2025 — Beast Mode (as lead), New Zealand Film Commission
2025 — My Years of Fear and Trembling (as lead)
2023 — Far North
2022 — Avatar: The Way of Water
2018 — Tide Waits For No Man: Episode GRACE (as director and actor)
2018 — Sister, Please (as lead)
2016 — Rime of the Modern Mariner, BATS Theatre, Pōneke
2016 — Close Enough (as lead)
