New single out: “Night”

From the album: Intimate Strangers
Music by Sara Serpa
Words by Emmanuel Iduma

Vocalist-composer Sara Serpa collaborates with Nigerian author Emmanuel Iduma on a stunning new album offering musical insight into the journeys and experiences of migrants, refugees, and displaced people.

Intimate Strangers, due out December 3, 2021 via Biophilia Records, features vocalists Serpa, Aubrey Johnson and Sofía Rei with pianist Matt Mitchell and synth player Qasim Naqvi, creating vivid soundscapes for stories from Iduma’s book A Stranger’s Pose.

“A fresh and riveting presence on the vocal-jazz landscape.” – Nate Chinen, JazzTimes

” Serpa possesses a preternatural cool, injecting weightless sophistication and melodic grace into everything she touches.” – Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader

Album release concert Tuesday, December 14 at National Jazz Museum, Harlem

There’s no better way to connect with the humanity of a stranger than to hear their stories and to share our own. On their poignant and striking new collaboration, Intimate Strangers, the extraordinary vocalist-composer Sara Serpa and the Nigerian writer Emmanuel Iduma traverse the African continent, sharing the author’s personal journey and collecting the tales of fellow travelers and migrants he meets along the way. Through Iduma’s insightful text and Serpa’s transcendent music, the lens widens to explore the struggles and emotions experienced by anyone who’s left their roots behind to seek the uncertain promise of a distant horizon.

“There were a lot of stories in Emmanuel’s book that really resonated with me,” Serpa explains. “While Recognition dealt with my country’s past relationships with Africa, I felt like his book presents a much-needed perspective of what borders actually mean. Through his travels and encounters with so many people just trying to cross into Europe, Emmanuel raises all these questions about traveling, migrating and leaving your home behind.”