A native of Lisbon, Sara Serpa is a singer, composer, and improviser who through her practice and performance, explores the use of the voice as an instrument. Sara has been working in the field of jazz, improvised and experimental music, since moving to New York in 2008. Described by the New York Times as “a singer of silvery poise and cosmopolitan outlook,” and by JazzTimes magazine as “a master of wordless landscapes,” she started her recording and performing career with jazz luminaries such as Grammy-nominated pianist Danilo Perez, Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellow pianist Ran Blake, and Greg Osby. Her ethereal music draws from a broad variety of inspirations including literature, film, and visual arts, as well as history and nature.

As a leader, Sara has produced and released ten albums, most recently Night Birds (2023), Intimate Strangers (2021), and Recognition (2020). She was voted 2020 NPR Jazz Vocalist and Downbeat Magazine Critics Poll 2019 Rising Star-Female Vocalist. She is a recipient of the 2022 NYFA Artist Fellowship, 2022 Copland’s Recording Fund, 2022 and 2021 USArtists Grant from Mid-Atlantic Foundation for the Arts,  2021 Herb Alpert/Ragdale Prize in Composition,  2020 New York City Women’s Fund, 2019 Chamber Music America New Jazz Works Grant 2019, and, between 2019-2022, was Artist-In-Residence at Park Avenue Armory. Sara teaches in the College of Performing Arts at The New School and has been active in gender equity in music and is the co-founder (along with fellow musician Jen Shyu) of Mutual Mentorship for Musicians (M³), an organization created to empower and elevate women and non-binary musicians.

Sara is using her GIDEST Fellowship to support the creation (including research and composition) of the interdisciplinary musical work Hospitality to be performed by a mixed vocal ensemble, of which she is a member, a string quartet, and electronics. The work embodies the confluence of the fields in which she has been immersed—music and social justice—and offers an opportunity for sonic exploration, focusing on human relations, promoting practices of listening and solidarity, where the present and future converge with the past.