sarah larsson
Sarah Jagoda Larsson is a performing musician and folklorist devoted to building resources to preserve and celebrate folk tradition. Sarah tours internationally as a vocalist and percussionist in The Nightingale Trio, an ensemble singing contemporary arrangements of Jewish and Slavic women’s music from Eastern Europe. Her music has been called “a revelation” by reviewers, and has been featured on Classical Minnesota Public Radio, in live performance on “A Prairie Home Companion,” headlining at The Cedar Cultural Center, and onstage at festivals in the US and abroad. Sarah composes original music based on Balkan and Yiddish folk traditions, and leads audiences in workshops exploring stories of immigration and culture. Sarah has studied music firsthand with master-teachers in Romania, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Poland, and the U.S.
Sarah is a singer and music researcher of Yiddish, Swedish, Irish, and Scottish immigrant family backgrounds. Larsson, her father’s last name, comes from her great-great-grandfather, who immigrated as a child from Sweden to New Hampshire and was the only person in his family to officially change the spelling of their last name back to Larsson from the Anglicized one-“s” version. Jagoda means “berry” in many Slavic languages, and is Sarah’s grandmother’s maiden name, the name of a corner of her family history that feels like a missing piece: that great-grandfather was absent from the family and took his stories with him.
Sarah studies and sings music from Eastern European heritage as a way to build connections to history and heritage. As a person descended from European immigrants, Sarah grew up without a sense of connection to culture and heritage, and spent her years as a young person searching out culture wherever she could find it — borrowing Klezmer music CDs from the public library, attending concerts — and ultimately was able to study Eastern European folk music as a college student. Today, Sarah performs and teaches Eastern European, Balkan, and Yiddish music as part of The Nightingale Trio and Nanilo. She has appeared on A Prairie Home Companion and performed at The Cedar Cultural Center, St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, Zlatne Uste Golden Festival in New York, and ArtScape in Baltimore, and placed third in the Irish International A Cappella Festival in Dublin.
In performance and workshops, Sarah brings a strong storytelling element to presenting songs from immigrant heritage, tracing the stories behind the songs and the (often hilarious) experiences of learning music with master-teachers around the world.
Sarah is a student of Ethel Raim (New York / Yiddish song), Susan Gaeta (Washington DC / Bosnian Sefardi song), Sanja Rankovic (Belgrade / Serbian song), Vahidin Omanovic (Sanski Most / Bosnian song & sevdalinke), Nafie Hussein (Breznitsa, Bulgarian song), Lisa Gutkin (New York / Yiddish & klezmer music), Josh Waletzky (New York / Yiddish song), Jeff Warschauer (New York / Yiddish & klezmer music). Sarah received a BA and MA in anthropology from Yale University, and once performed with the Yale Slavic Chorus for the crown Prince of Serbia and Princess of Greece.