Sara Serpa and André Matos will be touring in Portugal during the month of July with performances in duo in Serpa (07/02), Coimbra (07/07), Lisboa (07/14,15,16) and Setúbal (07/22).

At Hot Clube de Portugal drummer Devin Gray will join the duo for three nights of musical exploration.

More info here.

Sara Serpa & City Fragments will perform in New York on Saturday April 23rd, at the Cell Theatre, 7.30pm.

The Cell Theatre is located at 338 West 23rd Street, New York, NY 10011.Reservations at: 646-861-2253.

Led by the composer and vocalist Sara Serpa, the ensemble City Fragments has been flexible in its formation in the past,but it features now three vocalists and three instrumentalists (guitar, cello and drums). This project was born from a desire to bring together jazz vocalists, who typically perform as solo artists, and to create a communal relationship between their voices and the instruments. The primary objective of this ensemble is to explore and establish a platform in which vocalists and instrumentalists can contribute to the performance in equal roles, as improvisers and interpreters. City Fragments will perform “The Breathing Suite”, a 7 movement composition written by Serpa, inspired by Luce Irigaray’s words on breath and nature, bringing a unique combination of sounds and influences. 

Sara Serpa will have her debut as a soloist with the Albany Symphony Orchestra, conducted by David Allan Miller, singing a piece by Grammy-nominated composer and clarinetist Derek Bermel “Mar de Setembro”, a composition written to Portuguese Eugénio de Andrade’s poem with the same title.  The concert will also feature the Scottish virtuoso percussionist Evelyn Glennie.

The concerts will take place at the famous Troy Music Hall in Troy, NY on April 16th and 17th. In the early years of the 20th century the Music Hall featured performances from artists such as Lillian Nordica, Henri Vieuxtemps, Ignace Jan Paderewski, Albert Spalding, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Myra Hess and Jose Iturbi. In the 1930s and 1940s, artists including Vladimir Horowitz, Yehudi Menuhin and Artur Rubinstein played there.

Sara Serpa has been invited to curate a vocal festival at Cornelia Street Cafe this coming weekend, January 22nd- 24th. Among the artists you will find a very diverse array of vocalists, who are working on contemporary jazz and original music, all from very different backgrounds- see the poster below!

Sara Serpa performs with André Matos, on January 22nd, at 10pm, accompanied by Pete Rende (piano), Thomas Morgan (bass) and Billy Mintz (drums). Reservations are highly recommended at 212-989-9319.

Sara Serpa has seen two albums that were released in 2015 among the Best of 2015 lists:

Sara Serpa & Ran Blake- Kitano Noir:

Jazz History Online- Thomas Cunniffe– click here to see the full list

The Big City Blog– click here to see the full list

And a great review on New York City Jazz Records in November: (read more here)

““Kitano Noir” is the soundtrack to both sleepless nights and lost bourbon-and-cigarette breakfasts. Blake’s technical abilities are matched only by his emotional output and mastery of the material; Serpa’s utterly haunting voice boldly reclaims this music as if composing it anew. So stark, the listener can almost fill the space with the whisper of dark nights, long ago.”

Mycale- Gomory: The Book of Angels

The Stereophile– Fred Kaplan- click here to see full list

This coming Thursday, December 3rd, Sara Serpa is back to Cornelia Street Cafe, and with her, André Matos on guitar and the inspiring Argentinean composer Guillermo Klein on piano. Show starts at 8.30pm and they will play each other’s music. The last time the three played together was about a year ago and it was magical. Aubrey Johnson will join for a couple of songs. They will play songs in Portuguese, Spanish and wordless.. If you can’t make it, you can watch it online at livamp.com/cornelia.

At 10pm, André presents his 4tet featuring amazing improvisers: Tony Malaby on tenor sax, Masa Kamaguchi on bass and Billy Mintz on drums.

Sara Serpa & City Fragments will perform this coming Saturday, October 24th at The Cell Theater in New York. The Cell is located at 338 West 23rd Street. Click here to buy tickets.

” The three womens’ gentle bell-tone harmonies often gave way to mysterious, almost inaudible, fragmentary segues, Matos’s stiletto guitar often joining as a fourth voice in the choir, building to an unexpected, knifes-edge, sometimes darkly bluesy apprehension as it went on. Serpa’s spoken-word segments contemplated the human race’s alienation from nature, and a possible return to it, imbuing the work with a defiant, mid-80s punk-jazz edge.” New York Music Daily / Click here to read the whole review.

Sara Serpa is currently touring with Mycale- The John Zorn Vocal Project- in Panamá and Colombia, along with Sofia Rei, Malika Zarra and Aubrey Johnson.

Below are the tour dates:

September 30th- Workshop in Panamá

October 1st- Concert  in Panamá at Teatro Ateneo, Ciudad del Saber, 8pm

October 2nd- Concert at Universidad de Los Andes, Auditorio Alberto Lleras, 7pm, Bogotá

October 3rd- John Zorn Masada Marathon, Teatro Colsubsidio Roberto Arias Pérez, Bogotá

October 5th- Concert t Universiad EAFIT, 7.30pm, Medellín

Mycale received a feature on this weekend’s NY Times!

” …And the group’s second record, “Gomory: The Book of Angels, Vol. 25” (Tzadik), released in May, is astonishingly beautiful, a high point in the series: The singers’ individually rigorous tones and dispositions and arranging impulses surround the music and give it another dimension of originality; it sounds medieval and new at the same time.“

Click here to read the whole article.