When Portuguese composer-vocalist Sara Serpa and pianist-composer Matt Mitchell step into a room together, the air shifts. There’s no grand announcement, no need for posturing—just two artists who understand that music at its most profound is built on listening. Not just hearing, but listening. The kind that makes you feel as if time itself has decided to wait and see what will happen.
That quiet magic is the lifeblood of their new duo album, End of Something, arriving November 7, 2025 on Obliquity Records. Across 15 pieces—some meticulously composed, others daringly improvised—Serpa and Mitchell open a sonic space where vulnerability and virtuosity exist side by side, never in competition.
Their story began in 2018, when Serpa invited Mitchell to join her Intimate Strangers project. From the first notes, it was clear they spoke the same musical language.
“From the beginning, I felt I could count on Matt,” Serpa recalls. “There was no fear of getting lost. He listens so deeply—and understands the voice in a way that’s rare.”
Mitchell remembers it just as vividly.
“Every time we improvised together, it felt like something special,” he says. “It wasn’t just intellectually challenging—it was sonically beautiful.”
What began as occasional duo moments evolved slowly, patiently, into a full partnership—one defined by curiosity, trust, and a willingness to take creative risks without a safety net.
End of Something isn’t simply a tracklist; it’s an unfolding narrative, an unhurried conversation between two people who have learned each other’s rhythms and silences.
Mitchell contributes compositions that dance with rhythmic intricacy and harmonic surprise—like the winding “Diction” and the textural “Gluey Clamor.” His ballad “Trouvaille,” first written for a large ensemble, finds unexpected intimacy in Serpa’s crystalline voice, as if the song had been waiting for her all along.
Serpa’s work carries a poet’s ear for phrasing and emotional contour. “News Cycle” captures the dizzying churn of modern life, while “Carry You Like a River” (featuring the words of Sonia Sanchez) and “Dead Spirits” (from Luce Irigaray) open quiet spaces for grief, care, and transformation. Together, their pieces weave into a sound world that feels at once fragile and unshakable.
It’s not just the compositions that make End of Something compelling—it’s the way the two inhabit the music together. In sparse moments, they stretch time until the listener can feel every breath. In denser passages, they move in perfect tandem, as if navigating an unfamiliar path with complete confidence in the other’s next step.
“Sara inhabits a very specific world,” Mitchell says. “And I relish the kind of parameters she brings to improvisation—more aired out, more patient, with a lower volume ceiling but a huge range of nuance.”
“With Matt,” Serpa reflects, “my ideas feel understood before I’ve even finished singing them.”
The album was recorded over a year before its release. There was no rush, no need to chase a market moment. When Serpa returned to the recordings months later, she heard them with fresh ears.
“I was struck by how beautiful and surprising it all sounded,” she says.
That patience is audible in the finished record. End of Something doesn’t feel dated or fixed in time—it feels alive, as if it might change the next time you listen.
The duo will bring End of Something to life in a select run of performances:
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Oct. 2 – New England Conservatory, Boston, MA
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Dec. 3 – Georgetown Day School, Washington, DC
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Dec. 4 – Solar Myth, Philadelphia, PA
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Dec. 5 – Firehouse 12, New Haven, CT
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Dec. 6 – Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares, Northampton, MA
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Dec. 8 – Close Up, NYC
Sara Serpa is known for her pure tone, fearless improvisation, and genre-defying work blending jazz, chamber music, and experimental sound. She has performed at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and internationally with some of today’s most visionary musicians.
Matt Mitchell’s intricate, inventive compositions and fearless improvisations have made him one of the most respected pianists in contemporary music. His projects bridge the acoustic and electric, the composed and improvised, always with a deep sense of purpose.
In a musical landscape where skill often overshadows sincerity, End of Something is a reminder that mastery and vulnerability can coexist—and that listening may be the most important instrument of all.
As Mitchell puts it, with a smile:
“The theme is just that we do a good job.”
