Sara Gazarek

Sara Gazarek, a vocalist based in Los Angeles, has gained acclaim both as a performer and educator through her polished command of jazz and classic standards repertoire. Early notice arrived during her high school years when she became the first recipient of the Ella Fitzgerald Foundation Outstanding Jazz Vocalist Award, an honor that preceded her 2005 debut album Yours. Pianist Larry Goldings appears alongside her on multiple projects, among them the 2012 release Blossom & Bee and the 2019 album Thirsty Ghost, which received a Grammy nomination.

Born in Seattle, Gazarek first encountered the pleasures of jazz singing while attending high school, where her band director exerted considerable influence on her artistic growth and later path. During her senior year she earned the Ella Fitzgerald Foundation Outstanding Jazz Vocalist Award, which led to a performance at the Essentially Ellington Festival held at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City alongside Wynton Marsalis. She subsequently enrolled at the Thornton School of Music at USC in Los Angeles, working with bassist John Clayton as well as vocalists Tierney Sutton and Carmen Bradford. Throughout those college years she also devoted two years to teaching elementary students at an inner-city school. In 2003 she received the Down Beat Student Music Award for Best Collegiate Vocalist, and the following year she participated in the “Concord Jazz Festival on Tour” series, sharing stages across the United States with vocalists Oleta Adams, Karrin Allyson, and Diane Schuur.

Bassist and USC mentor John Clayton produced Gazarek’s 2005 debut Yours, a collection of Great American Songbook standards that drew strong critical notice, and he returned for the similarly oriented 2007 follow-up Return to You. Both recordings featured the same Los Angeles rhythm section, including longtime associate pianist Josh Nelson along with bassist Erik Kertes and drummer Matt Slocum. She next collaborated with Germany’s Triosence on the 2010 album Where Time Stands Still. Two years later she issued the standards-focused Blossom & Bee, and around the same period she joined the jazz studies faculty at the University of Southern California.

In 2016 Gazarek and Nelson recorded the duo project Dream in the Blue. After a challenging stretch marked by divorce and a reassessment of her artistic goals, she resurfaced with the wide-ranging Thirsty Ghost in 2019. The album included a guest vocal appearance by Kurt Elling and paired original material with interpretations of songs by Dolly Parton, Nick Drake, and Stevie Wonder, earning Gazarek her first Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album.