Soprano Sarah Hawkey is known for her ability to make early music feel intimate, vivid, and alive for today’s audiences.

She has performed with the New York Philharmonic and LA Opera, with appearances at the Salzburg Festival, the Verbier Festival, Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, the Boston Early Music Festival, Bard Summerscape, and in numerous performances at Carnegie Hall. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, on NPR and WNYC, and on PBS Great Performances.

A specialist in 17th- and 18th-century repertoire, Sarah is particularly recognized for her interpretations of the music of Barbara Strozzi. She is currently preparing her debut solo album devoted entirely to Strozzi’s works, exploring the emotional range and expressive freedom of one of the most compelling women’s voices of the Italian Baroque.

In 2019, Sarah appeared in the original cast of p r i s m, a world-premiere opera produced by Beth Morrison Projects in collaboration with LA Opera and the PROTOTYPE Festival. Composed by Ellen Reid, p r i s m was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music and has been widely recognized for its impact and innovation in contemporary opera.

Since the launch of her solo career in 2016, Sarah’s concert repertoire has included the modern-day premiere of Freschi’s Giuditta; numerous cantatas by J.S. Bach, as well as the St. John Passion, Mass in B minor, Magnificat, and Missa Brevis; Vivaldi’s In furore iustissimae irae and Dixit Dominus; Scarlatti’s Lidio e Clori; Handel’s Messiah and Dixit Dominus; Mozart’s Mass in C minor and Requiem; and Haydn’s Mass for Mariazell and Creation Mass.

Sarah is a recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to study the life and work of J.S. Bach with leading Bach scholars in Germany, deepening her engagement with his vocal music and historical context.

Her work in new music includes world premieres of Child in Upon This Handful of Earth by Gisle Kverndokk; Surprisingly Poetic Moments from an Otherwise Typical Hiking Guidebook, a song cycle by Abraham Z. Morrison; Drawing Down the Moon, an opera by Hunter Long; and Trespass by poet Sokunthary Svay with composer Pamela Stein-Lynde. Stein-Lynde also wrote I will not go for Sarah, an extended work for violin and voice.

Sarah is the founder of Blossom Voice Studio in Weston, Connecticut, and has led educational programs and workshops at The Juilliard School, Princeton University, and William Paterson University.