““…it was interesting how, with only four players and two singers, it ranged from polished miniature to operatic extra-large.”
”
Our Mission
Sarasa Music is a collective group of international instrumentalists and vocalists who perform classical music of outstanding quality, spanning the 17th to the 21st centuries, on both period and modern instruments, and bring this music to diverse communities. Through the ensemble's outreach program in adolescent detention facilities, it is dedicated to bridging cultural, aesthetic, and economic barriers and providing incarcerated teenagers with opportunities for growth, self-expression, and enrichment through music.
Jennifer Morsches and Tim Merton, Artistic Directors
For over 29 years, Sarasa Music has shared wide-ranging, inspiring musical repertoire with the greater Boston community, while simultaneously spearheading an award-winning outreach program for incarcerated teens in conjunction with the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services.
The Sarasa Ensemble is a collective group of international singers and instrumentalists who perform classical music of outstanding quality for diverse communities, with distinctive programming spanning the 17th to the 21st centuries on both period and modern instruments. It has received critical acclaim for its “informed and impassioned music-making” and is hailed for its “great clarity” and “irresistible energy.” Drawing on a pool of more than 125 world-class musicians from the United States, Europe, Canada, Brazil and Japan, the ensemble varies in size according to the particular program of each of its concerts. Sarasa has toured throughout New England performing on many renowned music series, such as the Boston Early Music Festival Series, the University of Vermont Lane Series, as well as at New York’s Frick Collection, the Morgan Library, and the 92nd Street Y.
Sarasa’s unique and award-winning outreach program has encompassed over 185 free presentation concerts and 75 residencies at teen detention centers in the Boston metropolitan region. Sarasa was unanimously awarded the Department of Youth Services Commissioner’s Community Partner Award for service to the community in September 2018, was featured on WBUR’s The Artery in 2019, and was granted an Early Music America Engagement Award in 2022, and again in 2025. Outreach presentations and residencies in the 2024-25 Concert Season were supported by a Challenge America grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
"Sarasa" is named after Saraswathi Natarajan, a South Indian educational activist who founded the Bapagrama Educational Center in Bangalore, India. Sarasa visited and performed at this free, inter-caste, co-educational, secular school for the rural poor in 1999. “Sarasa" is also the diminutive of Saraswathi, the divine power deity of the full essence of the Artistic.
