Tue – Wed, July 8 – 9, 7:30pm
Jazz Alley
2033 6th Avenue
Seattle WA 98121
Reservations: 206.441.9729
Championed by some of music’s most celebrated figures, Sara Gazarek has emerged as a strikingly original artist with limitless potential. Blessed with a gorgeous, translucent voice, excellent pitch and supple sense of time, Gazarek is steeped in the jazz tradition, but is not afraid to embrace the music that moves her generation.
Her most recent release, Return To You was created by the same talented team that put together Yours (including Grammy-award nominated bass master John Clayton as producer) and her equally youthful, all-star LA based band. Return To You features well-planned arrangements of more contemporary standards by songwriters Leonard Cohen, Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell, Harry Connick Jr., and Gillian Welch. Some for the best material however, comes from Gazarek’s acclaimed pianist, Josh Nelson, as he displays his considerable gifts as a composer and lyricist with four new songs.
Born and raised in Seattle, she was exposed to a variety of art forms at a very early age. Gazarek attended Roosevelt High School where she fell in love with its award-winning jazz program instantly. Under the influence of jazz educator and trombonist Scott Brown, Gazarek traveled as a soloist with the school’s jazz orchestra to NYC to compete in the nationally acclaimed Essentially Ellington Jazz Festival in 2000. Presented at the Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center, Gazarek was awarded the first ever Ella Fitzgerald Outstanding Vocalist Award.