Promotional Material
Short biography for Sara Salloum
Performance-oriented (150 words):
Sara is a lute player and scholar who reenacts the
performances of musicians from Renaissance Europe. Her passion for the lute
developed through her childhood love of the classical guitar, which she
treasured through an upbringing which involved an extraordinary amount of
change. Of mixed Ukrainian and Lebanese heritage, Sara had experienced life in
three different continents even before her sixth birthday, living in cities
including London, Beirut, and Auckland, New Zealand. Her secondary education eventually
concluded at a specialist music school in the north of Scotland.
At university, Sara became the Royal Northern College of
Music’s first lute student. She then completed music degrees at the
Universities of Manchester and Oxford, before a doctorate at Durham. Her
scholarly research explores the rich culture of women’s lute playing in
Elizabethan and Jacobean England, including how women’s clothing influenced
performance and how musical accomplishment shaped young women’s
lives.
Music scholar-oriented (10 lines):
Sara is a professional lute player and prizewinning practice-based musicologist. Her UK Arts Council-funded doctoral research on the rich culture of women’s lute playing in early modern England was recently commended by the Royal Musical Association, with her being awarded the RMA Practice Research Prize 2025. The panel described Sara’s work as ‘rich and insightful [...] original and engaging [...] of particular interest is the experiential work on how the clothes worn by female lute players shaped movement and influenced performance choices’. Sara currently enjoys life in the North of England where she applies her skills to diverse pursuits ranging from university lecturing to freelance performing and writing. She now aspires to pursue new research which will investigate the Iberian vihuela de mano, seafaring musicians, and non-professional vihuela performances which took place across Iberia’s colonial empire c.1600.
Sara Salloum is a Renaissance lute player and scholar who reenacts the performances of musicians – particularly women – from sixteenth and seventeenth-century Europe. She has performed in diverse settings including historic houses and castles, cathedrals, galleries and museums, opera houses and concert halls, cafés and bars. Her PhD brought her skills as a performing musician together with scholarship, and developed fresh and original methods for conducting historical and musical research.
Sara’s passion for the lute developed through her childhood love of the classical guitar, which she treasured through an upbringing which involved an extraordinary amount of change. Of mixed Ukrainian and Lebanese heritage, Sara had experienced life in three different continents even before her sixth birthday, living in cities including London, Beirut, and Auckland, New Zealand. A childhood that involved many different schools as her family moved between continents saw her secondary education conclude at a specialist music school in the north of Scotland.
When she moved from the guitar Sara became the Royal Northern College of Music’s first lute student, and began her studies with the internationally renowned lutenist Jacob Heringman. She also completed music degrees at the Universities of Manchester and Oxford, before a doctorate at Durham. Her research explores the rich culture of women’s lute playing in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, including how women’s clothing in the period influenced performance and how musical accomplishment shaped young women’s lives.
Sara now lives in North Yorkshire, where she applies her musicianship and scholarship to a broad range of projects including performance, university lecturing, and lute teaching, and she enjoys enrichening connections with fellow musicians and scholars.
