About SARAH GABRIEL

Described by Le Monde as ‘As fine an actor as she is a singer’ (Eliza Doolittle, My Fair Lady, Theatre du Chatelet), praised in The Guardian for her ‘springwater vocals’ (Air Loom, Supersonic festival), and with a performance that ‘just about undid me... magic of the highest order... absolute sorcery’ (The Guardian, on her Weimar cabaret band, The Blue Hour) Sarah Gabriel is a singer, writer, and actor with a passion for creating work with artists of all disciplines.

After graduating from Cambridge (where she was President of the Footlights) she began a career as a speechwriter. While training as a singer, Sarah made her USA debut as Lucy Lockit (Britten The Beggar’s Opera) conducted by Lorin Maazel, and her European debut as Eliza Doolittle in Robert Carsen’s triumphant production of My Fair Lady at Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, opposite Alex Jennings, Nicholas le Prevost and Margaret Tyzack. She has given recitals of music spanning 300 years at Wigmore Hall, Glyndebourne, Dartington and Cheltenham International Festivals and has broadcast for BBC1, BBC2, BBC Radio 3, 4 and 6, NPR (USA), RTÉ, France Musique, and Radio France.

Sarah’s fascination with the turmoil of the early 20th century led to her founding The Blue Hour - her Weimar cabaret band - with acclaimed composer and pianist Tim Sutton. Sarah has also performed 1930s Berlin cabaret at Dartington Festival with Joanna MacGregor, The Sage Gateshead, for Music at Oxford, at Kings Place, London, and for Club Inégales and the London Jazz Festival. 

Collaborations with dance companies include premiering Terry Davies’s music for Matthew Bourne’s show, The Midnight Bell; She premiered and toured Michael Daugherty’s Labyrinth of Love for Rambert Dance Company (for which she was choreographed with the dancers by Marguerite Donlon). Her work with silent film includes live vocal improvisation to the 1928 movie, The Passion of Joan of Arc with pianist Joanna MacGregor and jazz ensemble. Her collaborations with composer and multi-instrumentalist Sarah Angliss include the album and national tour of Air Loom, the soundtrack for Romola Garai’s feature film directorial debut, Amulet.

As an actor, she has appeared in feature films The Walk (directed by Giovanni Maderna; cinematographer Robbie Ryan - filmed in Rome in summer 2020) and Brigitte Rouan’s Tu honoreras ta mère et ta mère, and one of the UK’s first lockdown movies, ‘Our Love is Here to Stay’, directed by Michael Hoffman.

Sarah’s plays A House on Middagh Street and Barlines were commissioned by Britten-Pears Arts for the Aldeburgh Festival. Her solo show, Dorothy Parker takes a Trip - commissioned by Dartington Festival - has appeared at Oxford Playhouse and various UK festivals, as well as for the Hoinar Festival at the National Theatre in Bucharest. Her other solo shows include Lucrezia’s Last Breath (based on Handel’s extraordinary cantata, the first known staged performance of the piece). She wrote the lyrics to Iain Farrington’s Beethoveniana for the First Night of the BBC Proms.

As a soloist with orchestra, Sarah has performed the major oratorio repertoire, world premieres, operetta, musical theatre, and concert arias with ensembles including London Sinfonietta, Manchester Camerata, English Chamber Orchestra, at venues including the Southbank Centre, Kings Place London, Edinburgh Festival Theatre, the Lowry Salford and Bridgewater Hall, Manchester.

Operatic roles include Pamina (The Magic Flute), Fiordiligi (Cosi fan tutte), Donna Anna (Don Giovanni),  Morgana (Alcina), and Mandane (Artaserse), Jerusha (The Intelligence Park by Gerald Barry with The Crash Ensemble, Dublin) Le Feu (L’enfant et les sortileges) Anne Trulove (The Rake’s Progress), The Governess (Britten The Turn of the Screw, Budapest) and Elle (La Voix Humaine) for Cheltenham International Festival.

Sarah has been a visiting professor at Royal Academy of Music, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, LAMDA, Drama Centre London, Dartington International Summer School, E15 Acting School, and Aldeburgh Young Musicians.

Instagram: @sarahgabriel___

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