Sara Serpa / Sara Serpa & André Matos - Night Birds

Sara Serpa / Sara Serpa & André Matos - Night Birds
 New York, NY
Grant amount: $6,090

About the Artist

A native from Lisboa, Portuguese Sara Serpa is a singer, composer, improviser, who through her practice and performance, explores the use of the voice as an instrument. Serpa 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 the JazzTimes magazine as “a master of wordless landscapes,” Serpa started her career with jazz luminaries such as Grammy-nominated pianist, Danilo Perez, Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellow pianist, Ran Blake, and Greg Osby. As a leader, she has produced and released ten albums, the latest being Intimate Strangers (2021) and Recognition (2020). Serpa was voted 2020 NPR Jazz Vocalist, Rising Star-Female Vocalist 2019 by the Downbeat Magazine Critics Poll, and teaches at The New School. Between 2019-2022 Serpa was Artist-In-Residence at Park Avenue Armory, in New York and 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 Serpa 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.

Described by the New York Music Daily as “one of the kings of melody", and praised by The New York Times for his "fluid lyricism", André Matos has been a New York resident since 2008 with 12 albums under his name. With consecutive releases since 2016, Matos has been focused on a solo project and one of his most recent release "Estelar", recorded on an acoustic vintage Harmony guitar, was voted by the New York Music Daily as "one of the most rapturous, magical albums of 2021". Recent releases include a duo with saxophonist Jeremy Udden (Wandering Souls, 2023), duo with guitarist Simon Jermyn (A call for warmth, 2022), duo with guitarist Ryan Pate (Microlife, 2022) and Spells and Potions, an improvised music trio with vocalist Yoon Soon Choy and bassist Jeonglim Yang. Matos has recorded and presented his own music in New York City and around the world with a vast array of artists who have included Tony Malaby, Billy Mintz, Jacob Sacks, Leo Genovese, Thomas Morgan, Sara Serpa, Ted Poor, George Garzone and many others.

Dov Manski is a pianist, composer, improviser, and electronic musician. He has recorded over 15 albums since 2007, and has toured extensively under his own name and as a featured soloist. In 2021 he released his second album for Sunnyside Records, “The Hue of Silence” created in collaboration with painter Erin Parsch exploring the intersection between aural and visual arts by partnering each composition with a painting. He is the pianist for the Erick Hawkins Dance Company, and has transcribed scores for the company which are archived in the Library of Congress. In 2007 he received his BMA in jazz piano performance from the New England Conservatory of Music and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.