Élisabeth Kontomanou (Élisabeth Lurline Véronique Kontomanou) is a French jazz singer and composer, born in Sète on November 30, 1961. Her father was the Guinean jazz musician Jo Maka and her mother was Greek. She made her first record in 1993, spent roughly a decade in New York from 1995, and by 2007 was based in Stockholm. Between 1993 and 2014 she released ten albums as a leader or co-leader, with labels including SteepleChase, Nocturne and Plus Loin Music, and in 2006 the Victoires du Jazz named her best vocal artist of the year.

Music took hold of her early, from Maria Callas to African-American song, according to French Wikipedia, and Swedish Wikipedia, citing Svenska Dagbladet, says she grew up in children's homes. She moved to Sweden in 1980. Her earliest credit on Discogs is as the vocalist on Horn Stuff (Adda, 1981), the first album by the big band led by André Manoukian and the trumpeter Pierre Drevet. She returned to Paris in 1986 and founded a quartet called Conversation, which won the competition at the La Défense jazz festival. That year Michel Legrand hired her, according to French Wikipedia, for the lead musical part in the film Masque de lune and for a series of concerts, and the pianist Alain Jean-Marie arranged a tour of the Antilles for her. Discogs also credits her with solo vocals on two tracks of the Ornicar Big Band's Jazz Cartoon (BIG Blue, 1989), a guest vocal on the Big Band Christian Garros album Special Basie - Ellington (1992) and a vocal on a track of Yellow Cow, a 1991 Caravan album by Jean-Michel Bernard with the Paris Philharmonic Orchestra.

Her first album under her own name, Elizabeth Kontomanou (European Music Productions, 1993), has the pianist Jean-Michel Pilc, the bassist Thomas Bramerie, the drummer Pierre Dayraud and the flugelhorn player Stéphane Belmondo. In 1995 she moved to New York. Embrace (SteepleChase, recorded in November 1998 and issued in 1999) was her second album, with Pilc, Bramerie, the saxophonists Sam Newsome and J.D. Allen and the percussionist Abdou M'Boup, and it earned her a nomination for the Django d'Or. Hands & Incantation (SteepleChase, recorded in November 1999) is a voice and piano record with Pilc, running from "What a Difference a Day Makes" and "Body and Soul" to two readings of "Ne me quitte pas". In the same New York years she sang as a guest on records by others: Newsome's The Tender Side of Sammy Straighthorn (1998) and Global Unity (2001), the keyboardist Cornelius Claudio Kreusch's Scoop (ACT, 1998), Leon Parker's Awakening (Columbia, 1998) and The Simple Life (Label M, 2001), and Mike Stern's Voices (2001) and These Times (2003).

Her Nocturne years began with Midnight Sun (2004), a set of standards with Pilc, Bramerie and the drummer Ali Jackson. In 2005 she sang on three tracks of the pianist Franck Amsallem's Billy Strayhorn tribute A Week in Paris and released Waitin' for Spring, whose band was John Scofield on guitar, Newsome on soprano saxophone, the pianist Laurent Coq, the bassist Darryl Hall and her son Donald Kontomanou on drums. The Victoires du Jazz prize followed in 2006, the year she made her Montreal International Jazz Festival debut. Back to My Groove (Nocturne, 2007) is the record where she is most her own writer: she composed nine of its eleven tracks, her younger son Gustav Karlström was executive producer and arranger, and the band included the pianist Orrin Evans, the alto saxophonist Pierrick Pédron, the trombonist Daniel Zimmermann, the guitarist Marvin Sewell, the harpist Isabelle Olivier and Leon Parker on percussion. The American critic Kalamu ya Salaam called it a major breakthrough in a review of November 26, 2007.

Brewin' the Blues (Nocturne, 2008) is a voice and piano set of ballads and blues with Laurent Courthaliac, recorded in July 2007. Siren Song (Live at Arsenal) (Plus Loin Music, 2009) was recorded in Metz on January 19, 2008, with the Philharmonie de Lorraine under Jacques Mercier, her quartet with Courthaliac, Bramerie and Donald Kontomanou, and arrangements by Gustav Karlström and Tom Harrell. In 2010 she gave her first solo concert in Sweden, at Fasching in Stockholm, according to Swedish Wikipedia, and played the Huddinge Jazz Festival that May. Secret of the Wind (Effendi Records, 2012), a duo of voice and piano with Geri Allen, was recorded in July 2011 at a studio in Grestain, France, and draws on spirituals and soul songs. She appeared at the Tanjazz festival in Tangier in 2013, returned to Montreal in 2014 and released Amoureuse (Plus Loin Music, 2014), her first album sung in French. She has also been a guest on Jacques Schwarz-Bart's Abyss (2008), on two tracks of André Ceccarelli's Golden Land (2007) and on Leïla Olivesi's L'Étrange Fleur (2007). The streaming catalogues list her as a guest on a 2025 single by Kreusch and on a 2026 single by her son Gustav, who records as Gustav K.

AllMusic names Flora Purim, Ella Fitzgerald and Mahalia Jackson as her main vocal influences and describes a strong, textured voice. A 6moons review of Siren Song hears a cool tone with a soulful, resonant core and notes her stage presence, and Kalamu ya Salaam praises a full, rich voice on Back to My Groove. Her repertoire has three strands: jazz standards (Midnight Sun, Brewin' the Blues and the live orchestral set), her own songs, most fully on Back to My Groove, and a wider song book that takes in Jacques Brel's "Ne me quitte pas" on Hands & Incantation, spirituals and soul songs on Secret of the Wind, and the French chanson of Amoureuse. AllMusic files her under Vocal Jazz, Contemporary Jazz and Post-Bop. The chanson and soul material sits inside a jazz career: her records are billed and reviewed as jazz, and she has recorded for SteepleChase, Nocturne and Plus Loin Music with jazz players such as Pilc, Scofield, Newsome, Evans and Allen.