Recognition by Sara Serpa at Alwan For The Arts

Recognition by Sara Serpa

A unique interdisciplinary performance, Recognition melds powerful film imagery with live music. Singer and composer, Sara Serpa, directs and produces a visual narrative using never-seen footage which was recently discovered in her family archives in Portugal and Angola. This extraordinary ensemble, featuring Zeena Parkins (harp) and Mark Turner (saxophone), probes deep into the emotional core of this era through scored material and flowing improvisation.

The segments were shot in the 1960s in the fomer colony ruled by Salazars notorious fascist regime. The material has been edited and transformed to create a sensory experience in which music and image, highlighted with texts by the revolutionary, Amílcar Cabral, invite the viewer/listener to reflect on history in a visceral way....

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Recognition by Sara Serpa

A unique interdisciplinary performance, Recognition melds powerful film imagery with live music. Singer and composer, Sara Serpa, directs and produces a visual narrative using never-seen footage which was recently discovered in her family archives in Portugal and Angola. This extraordinary ensemble, featuring Zeena Parkins (harp) and Mark Turner (saxophone), probes deep into the emotional core of this era through scored material and flowing improvisation.

The segments were shot in the 1960s in the fomer colony ruled by Salazars notorious fascist regime. The material has been edited and transformed to create a sensory experience in which music and image, highlighted with texts by the revolutionary, Amílcar Cabral, invite the viewer/listener to reflect on history in a visceral way.
Amilcar Lopes da Costa Cabral is one of the greatest anti-colonial leaders of the twentieth century, who led the struggle to liberate Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde from the yoke of Portuguese colonialism.

About the Artist

Born in Lisboa, Portugal and based in New York since 2008, Sara Serpa is a singer, composer, bandleader and improviser who has been voted by the Downbeat Critics Poll 2014, 2015, 2016 as "Female Vocalist Rising Star". While Serpa is mostly known for her wordless singing with such jazz luminaries as Greg Osby, Grammy-Award nominee Danilo Perez, or as an interpreter of the Great American Songbook with Guggenheim Fellow and legendary pianist Ran Blake, she has also been collaborating with innovators like John Zorn, Guillermo Klein, Aya Nishina, Kris Davis to name a few.
Described as one of the most exciting avant-gardists on the New York scene"by JazzTimes magazine and as "a singer of silvery poise and cosmopolitan outlook" by the New York Times. Serpa has produced six albums as a leader with the labels Clean Feed, Tzadik and Inner Circle Music.

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