About
Sarah

Sarah Buechi (born in Lucerne in 1981). ‘She makes the music of the future,’ headlines jazz critic Manfred Papst in an extensive portrait in the NZZ about the singer, who was awarded the prestigious Moods-Aïda-Alliman Prize in 2025 and has ‘a distinctive voice with high recognition value’.

With her ‘sensitive art of intimacy, at once so open and so sparingly concentrated,’ ‘writers are fond of resorting to superlatives.’

She studied various types of music in America, Ireland, Ghana and India in order to develop songwriting, world music and jazz in a highly personal way.

SRF called her current trio the ‘surprise of the year 2022’ and with her current album ‘pink mountain sagas’ ‘the band confirms its class’.
Since autumn 2018, she has been a professor of singing at the HSLU, has performed on renowned stages such as the Berlin Jazzfest and the Intakt Festival London, and has had the opportunity to work with established, larger ensembles such as the Jena Philharmonic Orchestra and the HR Big Band.








Sarah Buechi was raised in a musical family and started playing the violin and piano at the age of five. After an award for a self-written musical theater at the age of 18 she decided to take music on as a profession. After graduating from Lucerne's prestigious Musikhochschule (HSLU) with two distinctions, she took a lengthy sabbatical in Bangalore immersing herself in South Indian Classical Music and Rhythm with the renowned gurus R.A. Ramamani and T.A.S. Mani, performing at festivals, on the radio and on the television. The results are apparent in her use of its demanding rhythmic and vocal techniques in a Jazz context.

Out of her own projects THALi (Unit Records, 2010) is the first one that brought Sarah Buechi to the attention of the Swiss Jazz Scene and intern to international musical collaborations with outstanding personalities like Steve Coleman, Dave Liebman, Lucas Niggli, Nils Wogram, Ronan Guilfoyle, Izumi Kimura, Christy Doran, Christoph Haberer, Stefan Bauer, Christoph Stiefel, Niels Klein, Matthias Schriefl amongst others. This led her to concerts, workshops and tours in Europe, South Amercia, USA, Canada, China and India.

Sarah taught at the Jazz vocal department at Newpark Music Centre (now DCU), Dublin for four years (2008-2013), lived after that in London (2013-2015) and studied at the Complete Vocal Institute, Copenhagen (2012-2015). In Switzerland in 2005 she was awarded the Friedl-Wald-Foundation prize, was nominated for the ZKB jazz prize in 2010, received three times the Irish Travel and Training award for musical researches in Ghana, Paris, New York (2010/2011) and has been supported by the Àrvore foundation from 2017-2020.
Back in Switzerland, she taught at the MKZ, Zurich (2015-2018), at the Jazz vocal department of the WIAM, Winterthur (2016-2018) and is now professor at the Jazz vocal department of the Lucerne university for applied sciences and arts (HSLU) since September 2018.
In 2025 she has been awarded the prestigious Moods-Aïda Alliman prize.

In September 2024 she has released her seventh album as a band leader on Intakt Records and collaborates with established musicians in various other projects around the world.

Sarah Buechi on Intakt Records