Bio:
Sarah Hanahan is an up-and-coming jazz saxophonist in New York City and is currently pursuing her Masters Degree in Jazz performance at The Juilliard School. Now a resident of New York City but originally from Marlborough, Massachusetts, Sarah grew up listening to a wide variety of music, but always had a special love for jazz. Her father, who plays drums and percussion, introduced Sarah to music and gave Sarah her first saxophone at the age of 8. Sarah played lead alto sax for the Marlborough High School jazz band. As a high school senior, Sarah was lead alto for the New England Conservatory Prep Jazz Orchestra under the direction of Ken Schaporst, who taught her much about the history and tradition of big band music. She also studied with tenor saxophone great, Jerry Bergonzi.
In 2015, Sarah was awarded a full scholarship to study jazz performance at the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz within the Hartt School of Music (University of Hartford). Her college professors include well-known jazz saxophone performers Javon Jackson and Abraham Burton. The Jackie McLean Institute has also afforded Sarah the opportunity to receive instruction from and perform with accomplished jazz musicians such as bassist Nat Reeves and trombonist Steve Davis. She recently graduated with her Bachelors of Music in the spring of 2019.
In the fall of 2020, Sarah started pursing her Masters Degree at the prestigious Juilliard School in New York City. She is focusing on Jazz performance and is studying with some of the best musicians in the business including Bruce Williams, Ron Blake, Kenny Washington, Marc Cary and others.
In addition to her heavy gigging schedule, Sarah and her band has had many amazing opportunities over the last few years to play at festivals and clubs such as opening for Helen Sung at the Paul Brown Bushnell Park Monday Night Jazz Series 2018 Finale, debuted at the Side Door Jazz Club, the Walnut Hill Jazz series at the New Britain Museum of Art, Rubber City Jazz Festival and many more venues. Sarah Hanahan Quintet was awarded 2019 Best Jazz Band by CT Now Readers Poll.
Sarah was also awarded the great opportunity to participate in many Jazz programs over the last few summers. These programs have provided Sarah with mentorship from some of the best in the jazz world and have been invaluable experiences. She participated in prestigious programs such as the Betty Carter Jazz Ahead program at the Kennedy Center 2019, Jazz Aspen Snowmass with Christian McBride 2019, Boysie Lowery Living Jazz Residency 2019, Woodshed Network with Dee Dee Bridgewater 2019, and Ravinia Steans Jazz Institute 2018. These programs included working with jazz greats such as Christian McBride, Jason Moran, Gregory Hutchinson, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Rufus Reid, Billy Childs, Tim Hagans, Marcus Printup, Peter Martin, Shelly Berg, Casey Benjamin, and many other greats. Sarah was also a part of Dee Dee Bridgewater’s 2019 inaugural WoodShed Network program which comprised of 8 young women in jazz talking about business and female empowerment in the industry.
Sarah has been working a lot with her band but has also had the privilege to be a side person for many of her heroes and mentors. Recently Sarah has been working with Sherrie Maricle and the Diva Jazz Orchestra playing second alto and touring nationwide. She has also been working with Jason Moran as part of a collaboration with the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. Sarah lives in NYC and can be found playing at various clubs in the city including Birdland, Smalls Jazz Club, Dizzy’s Club and others!
Sarah is currently a Boston Sax Shop Brand Ambassador and plays BSS reeds along with other saxophone accessories. Sarah’s main horn is the Yanagisawa A-991 alto saxophone.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).