Sarah Jane Morris

Born in Southampton, England, Sarah Jane Morris has since the early 1980s built a career spanning pop, jazz, rock and soul, carried by a deep voice immediately identifiable. She first appears with The Republic, a London-based band with Afro-Caribbean and Latin influences, then joins The Happy End, a large brass-band ensemble devoted to revisiting protest-song repertoires from Africa, Ireland and Latin America. Morris then gains visibility by collaborating with The Communards, where her deep timbre engages in dialogue with Jimmy Somerville's voice on several tracks of the group. As a solo artist, she released a self-titled debut album in 1989, followed notably by Heaven (1992), Blue Valentine (1995), Fallen Angel (1998), August (2001), Love and Pain (2003), Migratory Birds (2008), Where It Hurts (2009), Cello Songs (2011) and Bloody Rain (2014). Her repertoire blends pop writing, jazz arrangements, contemporary soul and a theatrical dimension already perceptible in her performances of Brecht, Weill or Eisler. Over the years, Sarah Jane Morris has also participated in external projects, notably with Pere Ubu on Long Live Père Ubu! (2009), with Antonio Forcione for Compared to What (2016), then with guitarist Tony Rémy on Sweet Little Mystery (2019), devoted to the songs of John Martyn.