Sara Serpa

A native of Portugal, New York-based Sara Serpa is a singer, composer, and improviser who has been described by The New York Times as “a singer of silvery poise and cosmopolitan outlook” and was voted 2020 NPR Jazz Vocalist and Rising Star-Female Vocalist 2019 by DownBeat‘s Critics Poll. She began her recording and performing career with jazz luminaries Grammy-nominated pianist Danilo Perez, Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellow pianist Ran Blake, and Greg Osby. She has also collaborated with Ingrid Laubrock, Erik Friedlander, John Zorn, Nicole Mitchell, André Matos, Okkyung Lee, Guillermo Klein, and Linda May Han Oh, among many others. As a leader, she has produced and released ten albums, most recently Intimate Strangers (2021) and Recognition (2020). She has performed her own music in Europe, Australia, and North and South America at international festivals including the Bergamo Jazz Festival, Festa do Jazz, the Panama Jazz Festival, Festival de Jazz de Montevideo, and venues such as Bimhuis, Casa da Música, Village Vanguard, The Stone, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Lincoln Center, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, among others. She is the recipient of grants from the New York City Women’s Fund (2020), Chamber Music America New Jazz Works (2019), New Music USA (2019), Mid Atlantic’s USArtists International (2021), as well as the Herb Alpert Foundation’s Alpert/Ragdale Music Composition prize (2021). Serpa teaches at The New School and New Jersey City University and is currently Artist-In-Residence at the Park Avenue Armory (New York). She is the co-founder of Mutual Mentorship for Musicians (M³), an organization created to empower and elevate women and non-binary musicians.