Sara Lazarus

Born in Wilmington, Delaware, Sara Lazarus is an American jazz singer who has been living in France for many years, whose career has been built between the United States and the European scene. Initially trained in piano and then in tenor saxophone, she discovered standards early through musicals before singing in the American Youth Jazz Band, with which she toured Europe in the late 1970s. After studies in English literature at Harvard, where she joined the university’s jazz orchestra, she was encouraged to sing by Illinois Jacquet. Sara Lazarus subsequently established herself in a vocal-jazz-focused repertoire, with an approach to standards marked by swing, precise diction, and a taste for intimate formats. Based in France, she works with several musicians from the French and European jazz scene, among them Alain Jean‑Marie, Jacky Terrasson, Manuel Rocheman or Riccardo Del Fra, and performs at festivals such as Jazz in Marciac, Crest Jazz Vocal, or the JVC Jazz Festival Paris. In 1994 she won the Thelonious Monk Institute's International Jazz Singing Competition. Her discography includes Give Me the Simple Life (2005), followed by It’s All Right with Me (2006) with Biréli Lagrène and the Gipsy Project.