Irma Jaunzem was a Soviet chamber singer (mezzo-soprano) and music teacher. Born on 27 September 1897 in Minsk to a family with Latvian roots, she studied at the Minsk Mariinsky Gymnasium from 1906 to 1914 and subsequently attended the St. Petersburg Conservatory.
Jaunzem collected and performed songs of the peoples of the world in more than fifty languages. She was among the first to establish lecture-concerts devoted to folk song. Her tours took her to Japan, Korea, and China in 1926–1928, to Germany in 1927–1928, and to Poland in 1929–1930. She published the book A Person Follows a Song in 1968.
From 1950, she taught at the Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov Moscow Music School and thereafter worked mainly as a teacher. Her students included Olga Voronets, Alexandra Strelchenko, Lyubov Bazhina, and Zhanna Bichevskaya. She was named Honored Artist of the Byelorussian SSR in 1935 and People's Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1957, and received the Order of the Red Banner of Labour in 1967.
Jaunzem died in Moscow on 17 April 1975 and was buried at the New Donskoy Cemetery.