Sarah Quintana is a New Orleans native who studied at the prestigious New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts and earned a BA from Loyola University New Orleans. A charming performer and devoted guitarist with an instantly recognizable voice, she moves effortlessly between folk, jazz, Cajun and French stylings — and is also a hatha yoga instructor. She grew up steeped in the scene: family friend Deacon John Moore was a regular at the dinner table. After Katrina she studied straight-ahead jazz in Europe, returning with a wider lens on her hometown's music.
In 2012 she was awarded an artist residency at A Studio in the Woods, where she recorded the sounds of the Mississippi River and incorporated them into an alt-country/jazz project called Miss River — the name of both her band at the time and the resulting CD. She works the trad jazz circuit with the New Orleans Moonshiners, played Lincoln Center's Midsummer Swing, and has become a fixture of Cajun music as a member of Michael Doucet's band Lâcher Prise, whose 2020 Compass Records release of the same name mixes swamp pop, Caribbean beats and New Orleans R&B.
Quintana splits her time between New Orleans and France, performing with French jazz vocalist Marion Rampal and saxophonist Raphael Imbert, and leads the Sarah Quintana Band with players like Rex Gregory — recent records feature guests including Louis Michot of the Lost Bayou Ramblers and Leyla McCalla. Her new album Baby Don't (2025), recorded at Dockside Studios in Lafayette and Marigny Studios in New Orleans, is her love letter to the Louisiana music and culture of the 1950s and '60s. With more than a decade each at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and French Quarter Festival, she is a scene mainstay — and as a fellowship-trained voice pathologist and singing-voice specialist at LSU Health Sciences Center, she brings gender-affirming voice care and vocal-health research to Louisiana's culture bearers and oral traditions.
