Full biography
Sara Decker

Sara Decker is a jazz vocalist, composer and bandleader. Her music brings together melodic songwriting, rhythmic variety and the freedom of improvisation. Her voice and original lyrics are at the centre of her work, alongside the interplay within her ensembles.

After studying jazz vocals in Maastricht, Decker received a Fulbright scholarship to attend the Manhattan School of Music in New York. Her teachers included Gretchen Parlato, Theo Bleckmann and Kate McGarry. She won the European Jazz Award in Italy in 2015 and second prize at the Shure Montreux Jazz Voice Competition in 2017. In 2018 she performed with the Academy Band under Bugge Wesseltoft, opening for the Chick Corea Trio in Montreux.

Her debut album, Long Distance, was recorded at Systems Two Studio in Brooklyn and released in 2017. For poetryfied (AMC Records, 2020), she composed music to poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, Mascha Kaléko, Jane Tyson Clement and Emily Dickinson. The album features her Cologne quartet with Billy Test, Nicolai Amrehn and Jeroen Truyen.

Expand (Unit Records, 2024) broadened her work into a transatlantic quintet. The album features Heidi Bayer on trumpet and flugelhorn, Yuhan Su on vibraphone, Kaisa Mäensivu on bass and Mareike Wiening on drums. In 2026 Decker presented Expand in the German Jazz Expo showcase programme at jazzahead! in Bremen. That July, she and her ensemble performed at Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s jazz concert in the park of Villa Hammerschmidt in Bonn.
