Susan Pereira – Vocalist use

Vocalist, pianist, percussionist, composer and arranger Susan Pereira has been one of the most versatile musicians on several of New York’s musical scenes since 1982.

Combining her jazz training with intensive immersion in traditional Brazilian music and culture has enabled her to develop a distinct musical personality. Fluent in Portuguese, she is a singer who blends a silky, rich tone with superior vocal technique and is a particularly skilled lyric interpreter and scat singer. Pereira’s percussive piano style is enhanced by her mastery of complex Brazilian rhythms and her original Brazilian jazz compositions are a popular part of her performances.

She leads the acclaimed Brazilian jazz group Sabor Brasil, co-founded with drummer Vanderlei Pereira, and has appeared with the group at a variety of notable festivals and venues, including Lincoln Center, the Rochester International Jazz Festival, the Jazz in June Festival (Lincoln, Nebraska), the Savannah Jazz Festival, the Hartford Jazz Festival, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC), Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Iridium, Birdland, B.B. King’s and the Zinc Bar, among many others.

Apart from Sabor Brasil, Susan has performed as a vocalist and/or percussionist with many top names in Brazilian jazz as well as in traditional samba percussion ensembles, in the U.S., Brazil and beyond, at venues such as Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the Blue Note, the Jazzmandu Festival (Katmandu, Nepal), the Syracuse Jazz Festival, the Village Gate and Rio de Janeiro’s Sambódromo. She has co-led master classes on Brazilian percussion at the University of Delaware and Rutgers University and has composed and/or arranged music for OMNI Music and Alfa Records, among others.

Susan teaches piano and voice privately in New York City. She is currently studying voice with Jeanie LoVetri, and has also studied voice with John Mace, Jeannie Goffi, Ann Ruckert and Charles Walker; piano with Kenny Barron, Jill McManus, Michael Abbott, Joseph Kahn and Milton Kraus; arranging and composition with Don Sebesky and Bill Barron; and percussion with Cyro Baptista, Manoel Monteiro, Abraham Adzenyah and Robert Levin. She is a cum laude graduate of Wesleyan University, where she earned a B.A. in Music and English with High Honors in Music. Susan has completed Level III of Somatic Voicework™The LoVetri Method at the CCM Vocal Pedagogy Institute at Shenandoah Conservatory.