sarah macombee

Sarah Macombee is a composer, singer-songwriter and storyteller with more than 30 years’ experience in the performing arts across Aotearoa New Zealand and the UK. Known for her emotionally charged songwriting and theatrical flair, she has released music under several monikers including The Macombees, SL Macombee, Macombee & The Absolute Truth, and Sarah Macombee.

Her work spans original albums, genre-bending live shows, theatre scores, and film projects—each rooted in instinctive storytelling and deep musicality. In the 2000s, Sarah fronted original bands, wrote for theatre and television, and ran a successful vocal coaching studio for a decade. With a background in choirs and a lifelong passion for harmony and vocal layering, she is also known for writing her own choral arrangements—adding a luminous, textural dimension to many of her compositions.

Her solo album Sense Offender (2009), released under SL Macombee and featuring the haunting single Gravestones (2013), marked a bold evolution of her sound—fusing folk, pop, classical, and electronica with cinematic intensity. Rich in emotional resonance and quietly genre-defiant, the album serves as a foundational portrait of an artist in evolution, foreshadowing the layered sonic worlds to come.

Her second album No Man’s Land was released in 2014 with her band Macombee & The Absolute Truth, alongside a commissioned short film Absolute Truths. The album received critical acclaim:

“The Absolute Truth blew me away… it instantly reminded me of a David Lynch film and would be well suited as a theme song to any HBO TV show.”

— Music.net.nz

In 2015, she released the surreal single Flotsam and Jetsam:

“A highly individual track that wouldn’t be out of place in any major feature film’s dream sequence… swelling orchestrated swathes of tripped out goodness.”

— MusicNation

In 2017, Sarah composed music and performed in Mockingbird, a theatre work by Lisa Brickell exploring intergenerational trauma:

“Sarah composed the music and plays the quite hilarious supporting role… their timing and delivery of lines is second to none.”

— NZ Entertainment Podcast

“Her inappropriately upbeat songs capture the blackly comic potential of the show… a careful balancing between funny and depressing that turns everyday horrors into comically over-the-top.”

— Theatrescene

From 2011 to 2013, she also created and performed Caberlesque, a cabaret-style show featuring her original songs and a nine-piece band.

In 2022, Sarah wrote and scored My Name is Laverne, an all-sung original musical that toured living rooms and halls across Tāmaki Makaurau and Te Tai Tokerau, winning Best New Work at the Whangārei Fringe Festival.

She is currently developing Tom for Rose—a hybrid opera-musical short film set in 1963 Aotearoa. Visceral and emotionally potent, the work blends folk, ballad, and orchestral textures to tell a story of forbidden love, racial injustice, and the silences imposed by family, religion, and colonial power.

Sarah’s musical world is one of emotional truth, layered soundscapes, and fierce beauty. She moves freely between genres, often working outside convention, guided by an inner landscape and a mercurial dialogue with the land and people around her.