Sara’s Serenade
Ask anyone. Watching jazz vocalist Sara Serpa perform on stage is a rare treat. Sultry, with dark expressive eyes, Sara seems to go into a trance when she wraps her hands around the mike and sings with effortless abandon – like breathing. Audiences are instantly mesmerized. Picture if you will, a female Bobby McFerrin.
Portuguese born
vocalist, Sara Serpa,
arrived in the U.S.
almost six years ago
to continue her music
education at Boston’s
famed Berklee Col-
lege of Music. Since
graduating she has
become a familiar
face on the jazz club
circuit, particularly in
New York where she
can often be found at
legendary spots like the
Village Vanguard and
smaller,newer venues
like Cornelia Street
Café.
Sara’s love affair with
jazz music first took
flight when she stepped
through the doors of
Lisbon’s famed, Hot
Club(e),Escola de Jazz.
Over 60 years old and
slightly in disrepair due
to a fire, Club (e) was the first jazz spot opened in post-war Portugal. Sara recalls feeling “at home and comfortable,” the moment she stepped into Escola de Jazz with its rich tradition and musical history.
She loved everything about the cramped cellar space with its echoes of past jam sessions by Dexter Gordon, Freddie Hubbard and Max Roach. Sara performed at Escola de Jazz over and over again, sharpening her vocal and composition skills -- creating her own unique style. Today, she shares the stage with newly minted jazz legends, Greg Osby and Danilo Pérez (one of her former teachers).
Sara is not your ordinary vocalist, she is a new style expressionist whose voice is an instrument played with exceptional skill. Her constant companion on stage and off is the extraordinary guitarist – and her husband - Andre Matos. They make, as the old adage goes, “beautiful music together.” Sara and Andre met in Boston while both were students and they are each other’s better half. Andre is also regarded by his contemporaries as a gifted musician with a great future. (Click below to see them performing together)
On her debut album, Praia, for Inner Circle Music, Sara was daring in her approach, experimental and very original. “Sara Serpa is a vocalist wielding an instrument as favorably unadorned and pure as any in jazz,” is how one critic summed it up. The Boston Globe called her “unique beyond words” and the publication, All About Jazz described her as a “phenomenon”.
Sara’s second album, Camera Camera Obscura, is a collaboration with her former professor, pianist Ran Blake, one of America’s legendary jazz impresarios. This album is a departure from her first which was populated with numerous scat riffs. On Camera, she adds her own signature interpretation of standards like, "When Sunny Gets Blue" and "April in Paris;" a smoky, languorous treatment, with an echo of the blues thrown in for good measure.
Sara will also be a featured performer on Danilo Pérez’s album Providencia.
