Sabrina Starke

It might have taken Sabrina Starke a long time to perfect her sound, but it is evident on her new album “Bags & Suitcases” that she has used her time well. “I am a thinker, someone who is very conscious of each move she makes,” Sabrina explains. “It took me a long time to find the right form, but I carefully took each step along the way.” Her 2008 debut album “Yellow Brick Road” garnered her both critical acclaim and commercial success, including going platinum in the Netherlands after leading the charts for 52 consecutive weeks and winning the prestigious Edison Pop Award for Best Newcomer in 2008 and in 2009, the Edison Jazzism People’s Choice Award.

Fast forward another year and Sabrina is recording “Bags & Suitcases” in Miami, Florida, collaborating with producer Pete Wallace whose credits include working with superstars such as Pink, Michael Bolton, Herbie Hancock and Alejandro Sanz. Starke considers her sophomore album a labor of love, incorporating the singer/songwriter’s admiration for the musical icons inspiring her from her early youth, such as Ruthie Foster and, first and foremost, Tracy Chapman. “I’ve admired her for so long already,” Sabrina says about Chapman. “I will never forget the first time I saw her: a woman with a guitar. I thought it was awesome.”

And true to her idol’s influence, the guitar features much more prominently on her second effort, starting with the album’s opening track ‘Brand New’. “Songs you compose on the guitar take on a different texture. Most of the time, they are more melodic which is exactly what I wanted. Where Yellow Brick Road contained a number of programmed elements, we recorded Bags & Suitcases organically. Everything is real."

“Bags & Suitcases” showcases Sabrina’s trademark smooth blend of folk, soul and pop, mixed with the singer/songwriter’s determination to tell a story, and tell it well. “Yellow Brick Road was like a small canvas: all the songs were about me and my own feelings. The songs on Bags & Suitcases are more concerned with the world at large and all the people around me.”

The album displays the Rotterdam Soul Woman’s talent honed to perfection and deservedly attracted the attention of legendary label Blue Note. It is the crowning achievement of a long hard road, starting early on with young Sabrina finding music everywhere around her and writing her first song when she was 15. Five years later she started taking guitar lessons and immersed herself in the Rotterdam music scene, first working with a reggae group and later providing background vocals for other artists’ demos. Her solo career began in 2006, with Sabrina winning second place in the singer/songwriter category of the Grand Prize of the Netherlands. With surprising patience and forethought, the singer formed a backing group, tracked down a manager and the right producers, the whole time trusting her instincts and making hard decisions. When Starke won a Music Matters Award, she bet on herself and used the prize money to independently record “Yellow Brick Road.” All her hard work paid off when Sabrina finally got the recording contract she had been aiming for all these years. And now it is time for a new goal. "I have worked patiently to get where I am now,” she says. “I am no longer an impulsive young girl but a 31 year old woman. I am not one for blurting out things but I do know what I want: my dream is an international career.”

With the success of “Bags & Suitcases” Sabrina cannot wait to perform at festivals all over the globe. She is more than ready and eager to enter the next stage of her career, even if it is a case of more miles to go, like Sabrina says on her album’s title track: “I know the road is still long/ Got my bags and suitcases and I’ll carry them alone.” Show less