BIO

Sarah Marie Hughes is a performing and visual artist currently living in Washington, DC. She has 27 years of experience playing the alto saxophone and also doubles on the soprano saxophone, flute, and clarinet. She received training in classical saxophone performance from Dale Underwood at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in music education in 2008. In 2015, Hughes earned a master’s degree in jazz saxophone performance from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where she studied with Jerry Bergonzi, Ran Blake, Anthony Coleman, and Donny McCaslin.

Hughes’ music is intuitive and genre-liberated while displaying an unquestionable command of her instrument and musical vocabulary. Her improvisations and compositions are infused with knowledge of both traditional and contemporary approaches and combine a love for “The Greats” with a drive to innovate.

Currently, Hughes performs with a variety of musicians in a free jazz context, weaving her own brand of melody and textures into spell-binding sets inspired by the sounds of legendary horn players such as Wayne Shorter, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, and John Coltrane.  She plays with a  stellar group of improvisers in Janel Leppin’s Ensemble Volcanic Ash, a DC band with tenor saxophonist Brian Settles, guitarist Anthony Pirog, bassist Luke Stewart, drummer Larry Ferguson, and Janel Leppin on cello and compositions.  Last winter Hughes spent 4 months playing in a band on a cruise ship in the Caribbean and since coming back has taken positions teaching private lessons at the International School of Music in Potomac, MD and also at the Music & Arts Center in Rockville, MD.  She is getting ready to release an album of original music by her latest band, Zara.

In her spare time, Hughes creates abstract artwork, which she considers an outgrowth of her compositional and improvisational processes. Her medium is mostly ink and watercolor with some exploration involving acrylics. She is inspired by the works of Kandinsky, Miró, and Dali. During more spare time, Hughes likes to improve at rhythm tapping (some might call it tap dancing).

More specifically…

After graduating from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2008, Hughes had a career as an itinerant band and strings director at elementary schools in Prince George’s County, MD. During this period, she also taught private woodwind lessons and was a member of the Bohemian Caverns Jazz Orchestra and the Brad Linde Ensemble. As a member of these ensembles, Hughes had the opportunity to perform important repertoire by iconic composers such as Gil Evans, Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Jimmy Giuffre, and Stan Kenton. She performed this repertoire and others with many brilliant jazz artists, including Lee Konitz, Dan Tepfer, Matt Wilson, Michael Formanek, Teddy Charles, Freddie Redd, Grachan Monchur III, and Andrew Cyrille.

Hughes has performed in various concert settings in venues on the East Coast and beyond, including the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage, the Goethe Institute, the Austrian and Swedish embassies, the Kogod Courtyard in the National Portrait Gallery, the Phillips Collection, the Hill Center, Rhizome, An Die Musik, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Owl Music Parlor and Roulette in New York City, and Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago. After graduating from the New England Conservatory in 2015 and returning to the DMV, Hughes continued to share the stage with great composers and improvisers, including Anthony Coleman, Ben Schwendener, George Garzone, Joe Morris, William Parker, Hamid Drake, Daniel Carter, Fay Victor, Luke Stewart, Matt Mitchell, Brian Settles, Nasar Abadey, Janel Leppin, and Anthony Pirog. In 2015 she traveled to Sweden with Amy K. Bormet's ensemble, Ephemera, to participate in Sweden’s first Women in Jazz Festival.

In 2017 Hughes moved to Baltimore and was assaulted, carjacked, and robbed of her Mark VI alto saxophone, a best friend of 15 years. Though a common occurrence in the city, she was greatly traumatized by the incident, which changed her world view, her spirit, and her music. From 2017 - 2019 she joined the adjunct faculty at Towson University, coaching jazz ensembles and giving private saxophone lessons. In 2018 she released her first album, Coy Fish, containing free improvisation and original poetry, with Sam Burt on daxophone, Daniel Ostrow on bass, and Nate Scheible on drums. Live solo performances and performance by her quartet during this period were designed to engage audiences in acts of free improvisation, including audience participation in activities such as vocalizing, collective drawing, and balloon playing. In 2019 Hughes released her second album, The Drag, which included Sam Burt on bass clarinet, Steve Arnold on bass, and Joseph Leo Arkfeld on moog. The album includes performances of her graphic scores and improvised singing/reading of her prose.

In the summer of 2019 Hughes participated in an interdisciplinary residency at D'Clinic Studio in Zalaegerszeg, Hungary, culminating in exhibition of her visual art along with a live performance with artist Estella Sanchis, involving improvised movement and costumes as well as various cathartic activities for the audience, such as plate throwing, bottle playing, blow torching, and balloon popping. After the residency, Hughes returned for a short time to Prince George’s County Public Schools, working with instrumental music students in the classroom. In 2021 Hughes utilized a grant from the Jazz Coalition to record an understated and atmospheric solo album, Forever Cocoon, featuring improvisations on saxophone, clarinet, flute, guitar, and piano.

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Sarah’s soul’s art is hard to define by genre or discipline. She loves to play music, to sing sounds, to paint and draw, to write, and to dance. Her art-driven career has had many homes, making it a cloud-like entity with blurred boundaries. This is not by Sarah’s design, but rather a result of her natural inclination to stay open to the energies surrounding her and to let them flow through her. In the environment of COVID-19, which discourages sharing and intensifies boundaries, Sarah hopes to find a niche that allows some stability and the ability to continue creating freely.

Words in the News…