Tuesday, December 14th, 7pm at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem – reservations are highly recommended here. 

Vocalist/composer Sara Serpa presents her collaboration with Nigerian author Emmanuel Iduma on the show of December 14th to feature music from her stunning new album Intimate Strangers.  The album is offering musical insight into the journeys and experiences of migrants, refugees, and displaced people.

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

Sara Serpa, Sofía Rei, Aubrey Johnson- voice

Erin Pettigrew- narrator

Qasim Naqvi – modular synth

Matt Mitchell- piano

Tickets are $10 and proof of vaccination and ID will be required at the door.  Masks are required for all visitors.

Premiered as a London Jazz News exclusive on 11/25/2021.

With music from the new album Intimate Strangers, this video was filmed at the heart of Luanda’s Island forest, directed by Fradique, one of the most exciting and talented voices of Angolan Cinema and produced by Geração 80. I feel incredibly honored for having his vision complement the music I created together with Sofía Rei, Aubrey Johnson, Matt Mitchell and Qasim Naqvi, with words by Emmanuel Iduma.

Here is what Fradique says:
“It was an absolute pleasure to do this video. The pace of the song and the lyrics are truly inspiring for me as a filmmaker. As if a tree is slowly bursting out of the earth, the song carries a peculiar floating weight that defies gravity. Visually I wanted to bring the setting of an old forest fable into the video and combine that with an everyday working-class tale – the carwashers. It was shot in the old forest of Luanda’s Island, a space abandoned by the city, where people still come looking for answers among carwashers, religious cults and the old trees.” 

The single “For You I Must Become a Tree” is out today Friday November 26th, on all platforms.

PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY HERE

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.”

www.saraserpa.com
www.biophiliarecords.com

Concert open to the MIT community on covid pass and open to the public with Tim Tickets

Portugal-born vocalist-composer Sara Serpa and MIT Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Music Evan Ziporyn join an array of MIT musicians (MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble, MIT Wind Ensemble, and MIT Vocal Jazz Ensemble) to present a unique program of Brazilian music.

Music from Amazônia and works by Antônio Carlos Jobim, Hermeto Pascoal, Egberto Gismonti, and Chiquinha Gonzaga, arranged by Guillermo Klein and Evan Ziporyn, will be featured. 

The concert will include talks by Talia Khan, MIT SB ’20 and future MS/PhD Candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, on her research in Brazil, and Maritta R. von Bieberstein Koch-Weser, who leads the “Amazonia em Transformação: História e Perspectivas” program at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of São Paulo, Brazil.

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Created and led by MIT Sounding Co-Director Frederick Harris Jr., Hearing Amazônia–The Responsibility of Existence is inspired by Brazilian music influenced by the natural world and by 2020 MIT graduate Talia Khan’s research on natural botanical resins and traditional carimbó music in Santarém, Pará, Brazil. Kahn’s research is made possible by a MIT-Brazil/MISTI Sun internship grant.

Building upon experiences with 2020-21 CAST Virtual Visiting Artists Luciana Souza and Anat Cohen, this multi-year project launches with a special concert drawing attention to the urgency of the climate crisis. Portugal-born vocalist-composer Sara Serpa and MIT Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Music Evan Ziporyn join an array of MIT musicians (MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble, MIT Wind Ensemble, and MIT Vocal Jazz Ensemble) to present a unique program of Brazilian music.

Music from Amazônia and works by Antônio Carlos Jobim, Hermeto Pascoal, Egberto Gismonti, and Chiquinha Gonzaga, arranged by Guillermo Klein and Evan Ziporyn, will be featured. 

The concert will include talks by Talia Khan, MIT SB ’20 and future MS/PhD Candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, on her research in Brazil, and Maritta R. von Bieberstein Koch-Weser, who leads the “Amazonia em Transformação: História e Perspectivas” program at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of São Paulo, Brazil. In this context she spearheads work on the establishment of the world’s first Rainforest Business School. 

Regarding her talk, Maritta Koch-Weser offers the following introduction:

“Biodiversity is the greatest treasure of Amazonian people and all Brazilians. A new path is possible (and most urgent) with ambitious science-based development of a standing-forest bioeconomy. The people living in this region look for sustainable social and economic progress. Renewed respect for Brazil’s environmental and indigenous protection legislation and building back nature on vast deforested lands could make a huge and positive difference. The reset has started.”

Hearing Amazônia–The Responsibility of Existence is presented by MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology and MIT Music and Theater Arts and includes research conducted with support from a MIT-Brazil/MISTI Suninternship grant.

Livestream https://mta.mit.edu/multimedia/view 

After a year of not performing live, I am presenting my latest project, Recognition, for the first time in Portugal, in a few days. 

Joining me will be Mark Turner (tenor sax) and David Virelles (piano). For those who attend our performance in Lisboa, you will have the chance to hear the amazing Angolan singer Aline Frazão in person narrating Amílcar Cabral texts.

All performances follow covid safety rules.
Make your reservation today by clicking on the links:

3 de Julho, 21.15h
 gnration, Braga
 Reservas

(This concert is supported by Mid Atlantic Arts through USArtists International in partnership with National Endowment for the Arts, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Howard Gilman Foundation)

4 de Julho, 19h
Porta-Jazz, Porto,
Reservas

6 de Julho, 19h30
Casa do Capitão/ Fábrica do Pão, Lisboa
Rua do Grilo, 119
 Reservas 

Porto and Lisboa concerts are made possible thanks to the generous support of Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, Arte Institute, and Robalo Music.

Sara Serpa will participate virtually in the following event, taking place on May 28th at Museu do Aljube, in Lisboa:

16h/18h30h – Fifth Circle: Unlearning Colonialism: ways of seeing and knowing

16h/16h20 – Inês Beleza Barreiros, presentation theme and authors

16h20/17h05 – Screening of excerpts from ANTICORPO: a Parody on the Colonial Ambition (Patrícia Lino, 2019-20, 44’); Teko Haxy – ser imperfeita (Patrícia Ferreira and Sophia Pinheiro, 2018, 39’) e Recognition (Sara Serpa, 2020, 56’). 

17h05-18h30 – Talk with Patrícia Ferreira, Sophia Pinheiro, Patrícia Lino and Sara Serpa, moderated by Inês Beleza Barreiros. 

No history of decolonization or of decolonizing praxes is ever completed without attention to gender. How did women view the liberation struggles in the former Portuguese colonies? How were their ways of seeing integrated or not in the imagination of colonialism? Was there a specific gaze to women over the liberation struggles? What knowledge and awareness do we have of/about these ways of seeing? And how do these ways of seeing intersect with those of contemporary filmmakers, artists, curators and academics who are now questioning public and private archives, are visually recreating their memories or re-imagining colonialism? What role academic research, archive conservation policies, programming and curatorship have in questioning or prolonging (official) “politics of memory”?

GATHERING(S) Gendering Decolonizations: Ways of Seeing and Knowing intends to contribute to the debate.

Sara Serpa is one of the recipients of the Herb Alper/Ragdale Prize in Composition 2021. In the spirit of the partnership between The Herb Alpert Foundation and CalArts, the Herb Alpert Award has developed collaborative relationships with four residency programs, all of whom honor and support talented artists, and their forays into the unknown.

M³ released The Art Of Being True: M³ Anthology of Writings, the first of an archive of writings by the first cohort of M³ artists that aims to take control of the narrative with regard to the work of underrepresented musicians. The anthology was released on International Jazz Day, Friday, April 30, and is available from online literary arts publication, Publik / Private, for free. 

The Art Of Being True: M³ Anthology of Writings aims to expand M³’s mission, by empowering and elevating narratives by musicians of underrepresented gender identities including musicians marginalized on the basis of race, sexuality, or ability. It features contributions by M³’s inaugural Summer Solstice 2020 cohort’s performer-composers: Romarna Campbell (UK), drums; Caroline Davis (New York), saxophone; Eden Girma, (US / UK), voice, multi-instrumentalist; Val Jeanty (Haiti / New York City), percussion, electronics, turntables; Maya Keren (Philadelphia), piano; Erica Lindsay (Rosendale, NY), tenor sax; Lesley Mok (New York City), drums; Tomeka Reid (Chicago / New York City), cello; Sara Serpa (Portugal / New York City), voice; Jen Shyu (New York City / East Timor), voice, multi-instrumentalist; Anjna Swaminathan (Brooklyn), violin, voice, multi-disciplinary theatre artist; and Sumi Tonooka (Philadelphia), piano.

The pieces range from essays and poetry on creative expression, composition, mentoring, artistic statements, to personal experiences in music, grief, motherhood, mental health, and fertility treatment, The Art Of Being True: M³ Anthology of Writings reveals the artists’ inner world that the M³ founders say have largely been ignored and diminished in the music field, one in which non-male voices are powerful creators, listeners and critics. M³ founders Jen Shyu and Sara Serpa say:

We wanted to create an archive of writings that takes control of the narrative with regards to underrepresented musicians. We envision it as a legacy for future generations in which authorship and power shifts towards women and non-binary musicians while decentering white patriarchy in music.

Jordannah Elizabeth, the founder of Publik / Private and also Mutual Mentorship forMusicians’ Editor-in-Chief, adds:

Women in jazz and creative music fight through the disparity of representation, and it takes bravery to work in such a medium and male-dominated realm. This anthology is a testament that art must prevail within the prison of others’ perceptions.

For more information about the M³ model, see the original announcement of the project, as well as MutualMentorshipForMusicians.org. Inquiries about the initiative may be directed to info@MutualMentorshipForMusicians.org.

The Europe Day Event 2021, on 5 May 2021, 1.00pm EST  is devoted to gender equality stories -displaying EU efforts, in partnership with the UN, in achieving &supporting Women’s & Girls’ Rights around the world.

There will be video messages of Josep Borrell, EU High Representative/Vice-President & Helena Dalli, EU Commissioner for Equality, UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcukainterview by EU trainees, Irina Sukhy, Women Environmental Human Rights Defender,Ecohome co-founder, Belarus, Sara Serpa, vocalist, composer & gender equality activist and a performance by Mycale featuring Ayelet Rose Gottlieb, Sofia Rei, Sara Serpa & Malika Zarra. Mycale is a group of four vocalists-arrangers, put together by John Zorn in 2009 to create an acapella quartet that would collaboratively arrange selections from his Book of Angels compositions. 

Sara Serpa will premiere her new piece Miniatures online, commissioned by the Jazz Coalition, on Thursday, April 22nd, at the Biophilia Records Festival.

Featuring Sara Serpa on voice and André Matos on guitar, Miniatures is a reflection on Serpa’s experience during the Covid-19 pandemic in New York. The piece is divided in 4 parts: 1. News Cycle, 2. Optimism and Despair (with text by Zadie Smith), 3. How Can I Create? , 4. Watching You Grow. Video was created by Mariana Meraz.

To sign up for the Biophilia Records Festival, click here.