Sara Colman is amongst the UK’s most respected jazz vocalists. After being selected for the Jerwood series of Rising Star concerts she was a recipient of an inaugural Birmingham Jazz Award and has since forged a strong individual voice with the celebrated album Ready and performances at major UK venues and festivals.
Sara enjoyed a longstanding collaboration in vocal trio The Passion; and wrote and performed for the eponymous ‘Colman Brothers’ album with her brothers Mat and Andrew.
In recent years Sara has enjoyed a showcase performance at Jazzahead conference in Germany, Jazzlines Vocal Series gigs with Jose James and Claire Martin, and a performance of new music at Manchester Jazz Festival with Jami Sheriff.
Sara was invited by Laura Mvula to feature alongside her in the orchestral performances of music from her album Sing to the Moon with the Metropole Orkest. It’s concert debut was at the BBC Proms in 2014 and in 2015 they performed at the North Sea Jazz Festival, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, with the Helsinki Philharmonic in Finland and made a live DVD from Paradiso in Amsterdam.
As a published and commissioned songwriter Sara has written and arranged for a capella group Black Voices, The Lichfield Festival and Lichfield Gospel Choir.
May 2016 saw performances of a musical Sara wrote with novelist Mez Packer called The Hand that Feeds to audiences of thousands at the Bullring in Birmingham.
Sara recently collaborated with the young singer-songwriterMahalia (whom she also coaches) to write UP which features on her EP Never Change. Mahalia has supported Ed Sheeran, Emily Sande and was the vocalist/co-writer on We the Generation by Rudimental. (**A little interesting fact …… in their very early days, Sara coached the Irish girl band Wonderland!) Sara is a very experienced vocal tutor with more than twenty years experience of working in a variety of educational settings. She is one third of Colman Carroll & Bancroft and along with touring this year their Vocal Jazz workshops in Cromarty, Pathhead, Hastings, Portugal and now France are always enthusiastically enjoyed!
Since 2012 Sara and Percy Pursglove have led the increasingly popular Jazzlines Summer School in Birmingham along with the instrumental and vocal ensemble sessions that continue through the year.
Sara has been a jazz vocal tutor at Birmingham Conservatoire for over twelve years and is a regular tutor at the Montgomery/Holloway Music Trust summer school.
Sara has an MA in Songwriting and runs workshops in songwriting a enjoys working on creating original materials with singers - I believe that by writing and singing something of your own, something completely new, you find a voice which is authentic and unique – even if you never sing that song in public, at least you have accessed that sound which you can now use in other songs you do sing in publiC
Based in Bristol, Sara is writing and recording for a new album to be released by Stoney Lane records in early spring 2017.

“It’s not easy being a singer. First of all there is no external instrument to help produce the right sound; the singer is the instrument.  Then there are those twisting and turning melody lines to negotiate.  And to top it all there are these pesky things called lyrics.  There are countless singers who, blessed with good vocal cords and a good musical memory, are able to master those first two steps.
But it’s the special few who make sense of step three.  And Sara Colman is one of those.  She doesn’t just make a lovely sound floating over the surface of melody and words; she takes up residence in the song.  And her musical home has many rooms – jazz standards like I’m beginning to see the light, contemporary songs by Joni Mitchell, Walter Becker and India Arie, her own songs, and those of friends like Jacqui Dankworth.  They have striking images in them – stars implode, there are subliminal messages on the TV – and they centre, of course, upon the euphoria and despair that are integral to affairs of the heart.” - Excerpt from album launch review by  Peter Bacon

“If there’s another solo vocal album released by a UK jazz artist this year that supplies a bigger sugar-rush of auditory pleasure than Ready, I’ll eat the next Jazzwise covermount CD.” – Jazzwise