Sara Decker Quartet — poetryfied

What happens when a poem becomes a song? For poetryfied, jazz vocalist and composer Sara Decker wrote original music for poems by Mascha Kaléko, Rainer Maria Rilke, Emily Dickinson and Jane Tyson Clement. The words remain at the centre, while melody, changing rhythms and the quartet’s improvisations open up new ways of hearing them.

The project took shape after Sara’s years in the New York jazz scene. Returning to Germany, she found in Kaléko’s poetry a way back to singing in her own language. The album explores home, freedom and change, moving between intimate, chamber-like passages and the energy of an improvising band. A jazz interpretation of Massive Attack’s “Teardrop” brings a song from popular music into this poetic arc.

Sara sings and composes for a quartet of piano, double bass and drums. The album, released by AMC Records in 2020, was recorded with Billy Test, Nicolai Amrehn and Jeroen Truyen, with guest contributions from Heidi Bayer, Stefan Karl Schmid and Julia Kriegsmann. On stage, the quartet opens these songs to new musical dialogue. Between familiar words and unexpected sounds, poetryfied tells a story of home, freedom and change.