By the time she began classes at her hometown Seattle’s nationally renowned Roosevelt High School, Sara Gazarek was no stranger to the vocal arts: singing in public had come easily to her as a child. But the untutored young singer found a new outlet for her talent in the school’s award-winning jazz program. (“I didn’t know what middle C was,” she recounts, “but I could swing, and I had a really strong ear for improvisation.”) When the school’s jazz orchestra entered the Essentially Ellington competition in New York, Gazarek emerged with the “Best Vocal Soloist” award. She also had discovered her true calling, realizing that jazz allowed her to reveal “the human behind the music, instead of just some character in an onstage musical.”

Gazarek attended the University of Southern California, where she studied with bassist-arranger John Clayton and vocalist Tierney Sutton, and won a Downbeat student music award in 2003. Just a few years later, at all of 23 years old, she recorded her debut album, Yours, followed by a two-month nationwide tour. Gazarek’s subsequent studio albums – Return to You (2007), Blossom & Bee (2012), and Dream in the Blue (2016) – continued to earn critical raves and cement her reputation as an important young jazz voice.

In 2016, after departing from her 11-year musical alliance with pianist Josh Nelson, she began working with other collaborators (Billy Childs, Kurt Elling, Fred Hersch, Geoffrey Keezer, Alan Ferber, Helen Sung, among others), and expanding her range of inspirations, a process that led to the breakthrough album Thirsty Ghost (2019). “Before that, my records were beauty-focused instead of expression-focused,” she says, pinpointing the creative “aha” moment that led her to delve deep into her own experiences, the darkness as well as the light. Thirsty Ghost subsequently received two GRAMMY® nominations and established her as a vital and intrepid vocal artist.
On her latest release, the EP Vanity, Gazarek continues to concentrate on singing truth instead of mimicking beauty, stretching her musicianship and vocal toolbox. The four-song collection also includes the first composition from Gazarek, who had already proven herself a skilled lyricist on previous recordings.

Now based in Los Angeles, Gazarek often tours internationally as a soloist/band leader, and as a co-founder of the vocal collective, säje, whose debut album earned a GRAMMY Award® for Best Arrangement Instruments and Vocals. Sara is a 2023 Chamber Music of America New Jazz Works grant recipient, serves on the LA Chapter Board of Governors for the Recording Academy, and works as an Associate Professor of Jazz Voice at the Eastman School of Music (University of Rochester) where she is currently designing and leading their new jazz voice program. Sara’s full length nonet project, an expansion of her critically celebrated EP Vanity, is set to release in Fall of 2024.