Music has been an important part of Sara's life starting, quite literally, from the moment she was born. She’s the daughter of Grammy®-winning bassist Rob Wasserman and her mother, Clare Wasserman has long worked in music management. “One of my earliest musical memories is of my dad playing with David Grisman at our hometown music club the Sweetwater in Mill Valley,” she recalls. “I was probably 3 or 4 and hidden under a table because, ...

Music has been an important part of Sara's life starting, quite literally, from the moment she was born. She’s the daughter of Grammy®-winning bassist Rob Wasserman and her mother, Clare Wasserman has long worked in music management. “One of my earliest musical memories is of my dad playing with David Grisman at our hometown music club the Sweetwater in Mill Valley,” she recalls. “I was probably 3 or 4 and hidden under a table because, obviously, children were not allowed.” When she was 5 years old, the legendary violinist Stephane Grappelli played “Happy Birthday” to her at a concert at the Paul Masson Winery. The birthday girl instinctively stood up and acknowledged his attention. Some kids are just born to it, it seems.

As she grew up, she was exposed to more great music and became fascinated with Etta James, Bonnie Raitt and Whitney Houston. She was in the studio with her father when he was joined by Bruce Hornsby, Jerry Garcia and Branford Marsalis for a Levi’s commercial directed by Spike Lee. Her mother took her to see Prince when she was 6 and that same little girl took in Madonna’s “Who’s That Girl” show as Bill Graham’s guest at Shoreline Amphitheatre. Years later, it was at that same venue that she first performed professionally, sitting in with RatDog (Bob Weir and her father’s band) at The Further Festival in 1997. She followed Bonnie Raitt, one of her idols, and sang a song that had been written by her father and the late “Gentleman” Jim Capaldi of Traffic before a mesmerized crowd of 20,000. The song was “Solid Ground.” Twelve years later that same song would later serve as the title track to her debut album.

Sara had begun to take vocal lessons at the age of ten and kept up her studies except for what she facetiously calls her rebellious period. At the age of 18 she first moved to New York and enrolled in the Neighborhood Playhouse to pursue an acting career but eventually returned to music and never looked back. She realized that she was actually in the process of making an album about three years into it; she recorded, worked with others and grew her work most organically, like a gardener. The result is an album that reflects different times and facets of Sara’s life so it’s very difficult to categorize. Certainly there are jazz overtones but her pop sensibility is strong and the girl also knows how to rock. It’s really not all that relevant to try to jam it into a given genre because Sara pays no heed to arbitrary labels. To her, music is its own reward, whatever you choose to call it. We call it brilliant.