Singer and songwriter Sarah Morrau uses music to heal her audience – and herself – InForum

FARGO – Sitting at a lounge table at Luna Neighborhood Kitchen in Midtown, Sarah Morrau spreads triple-cream Brie on a seeded cracker, garnishes it with a dollop of fig jam and takes a bite.

“Oh, that’s good,” she says, taking a second, conservative bite and listening to the music blaring from the café’s speakers. “Flowers” by Miley Cyrus is playing and Morrau can’t help but sway along to the beat.

“I like Miley,” she says, turning her gaze and a fork to a casserole dish of sweet pickled gherkins that a waiter has placed on the table in front of her. “She’s feisty.”

But where Cyrus is defiant and brave, Morrau’s own style as a musician is romantic, cheerful and often sentimental, a deliberate combination of emotions that perfectly sums up her philosophy of life, namely having just enough hope and happiness.

“For me, music has always been something restorative and comforting,” Morrau said in a recent interview with The Arts Partnership. “For me, music is a connection point that can be really good for the soul.”

David Samson/The Forum

The Fargo-based singer, songwriter and pianist has long been a fixture in the community’s live music scene, performing at countless events and concerts. She is known for her jazz vocal skills, but dabbles in many genres.

Morrau was heavily involved in Deb Jenkins’ Celebration of Women and Their Music, an annual festival that brought together local female musicians. She also sings frequently at events and holiday concerts throughout the community and has been the contemporary music director at Olivet Lutheran Church for many years.

For a time, Morrau also recorded numerous cover songs and her own pieces with her close collaborator, pianist Rebekka DeVries. Morrau’s 2009 studio album “Here’s to Life” includes “Vincent,” which was written by Don McLean and first released in 1971. The song still gets thousands of listens a year on streaming services.

Morrau and DeVries regularly perform at the Plains Art Museum’s Noon Holiday Concerts. They have also appeared on Prairie Public Television’s “Prairie Musicians” and the program “Angels of the Muse.”

In total, Morrau has recorded three albums: Storm Warning (1997), To Hold You (1999) and Here’s to Life (2008).. She also participated in a Christmas album, Hallelujah (2001), featuring local singer/songwriters Nita Velo and Connie Hill.

David Samson/The Forum

Morrau grew up in a household where music and creative expression were encouraged.

“My parents just loved music and listened to such a wide variety of it,” Morrau said. “Classical music was always something I thought of as a more relaxing pastime, or like when I was cleaning the house, my mom always listened to classical music. My dad did too. They loved listening to NPR… But they also listened to the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.”

Before Morrau began singing by ear, she took piano and voice lessons for many years as a child. Her father wanted her to be an opera singer because he thought so highly of it, but by the time she was in fifth grade, Morrau’s own tastes were leaning toward vocal jazz, James Taylor and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Opera was out of the question for her.

“I didn’t really understand why he wanted me to do opera music,” says Morrau, although she admits that her father probably recognized potential in her from a young age and wanted to encourage her to pursue music – if that was what she wanted.

Morrau’s musical endeavors are not her only source of income. She holds a master’s degree in counseling from NDSU and has worked as a counselor at a local psychiatric hospital, where she admits patients, since 2006.

“I try to figure out, in consultation with the psychiatrist on duty, what care is best for the person,” Morrau said. “It’s actually like writing a story or a song. I ask a lot of questions to get a more complete picture of the patient’s current situation. Then I start to put the story together to figure out what might be the best way forward for the person.”

Before turning to consulting, Morrau earned a bachelor’s degree in English and mass communications and a minor in French from Minnesota State University Moorhead. She thought she might want to be a news anchor or a writer.

Not knowing what to do next, Morrau took a few years off and worked as a waitress, fell in love, and married her now ex-husband. As it turned out, that was exactly the time she needed to figure out if pursuing her passion for consulting could be a viable career path.

“I always enjoyed psychology classes because I was trying to understand how people react to certain situations and what drives them,” she said. “And then there was one of my professors who said early on that most of us who go into counseling come from families with significant problems. That’s kind of funny, but often very true. We just want to make sense of things, for ourselves and for others.”

Between raising her three children and building a career as a counselor and artist, Morrau has expanded her passion for wellness by becoming a certified yoga instructor and being a mainstay of the group fitness program at the YMCA of Cass and Clay Counties for decades.

But all that happened before life struck hard. In 2017, Morrau was diagnosed with breast cancer, around the same time her mother’s deteriorating health required a transition into care.

“During the COVID lockdowns, she was getting worse and worse, and because she was living in a facility, we couldn’t just go in and visit her,” Morrau said. “I remember our family made a memory book for her and we just had to hand it over to the staff at the home because we weren’t allowed to go in and give it to her ourselves. We had to stand outside through the window and watch from a distance as she hugged it.”

Barbara Crow died in 2021, then Morrau lost her father, Jay Crow, in 2023. Adding to her loss, she found herself in an empty nest when all three of her children graduated from high school and moved out.

“I feel like my creativity was kind of stifled when all these things were happening at once,” she said. “It was like that for a while, but I feel like things are slowly coming back.”

Between caring for and healing herself, Morrau’s musical endeavors came to a halt. Morrau has been in remission from cancer since 2021 and has since returned to music.

Now Morrau intends to record some new material in collaboration with local sound engineer Steve Wallevand.

“In some ways, it’s more intimate. It’s just you and the producer or the engineer, and you can just play around with the dynamics of a microphone and get as many takes as you need,” Morrau said. “When you’re performing live, you’re definitely intimate with the audience and you’re vulnerable, but a recording gives you a little protection.”

Morrau sees the recording process as a purely collaborative effort. “I get suggestions and feedback from the people I work with, which are very useful, but ultimately it’s also about what I want, although I’m always open to criticism.”

At times, Morrau’s grief has pushed her into the background, but she now feels the urge to return to her music with greater intensity than ever. She has been awarded an Individual Arts Partnership grant for 2023 by The Arts Partnership to fund the development of her own website, which she hopes to use to promote her music and book live performances again.

“I would also like to find someone to perform with again. I want to continue performing live and hope to be able to do that more often soon,” she said.

Someone in the back of the restaurant switches the music from pop hits to something more ambient. Maybe Brian Eno. A waiter comes by to check on things and asks if Morrau would like to see a dessert menu.

She politely declines and crumples her cloth napkin on her empty cheese plate.

“That was just enough, don’t you think?”

This article is part of a content partnership with The Arts Partnership, a nonprofit organization that promotes the arts in Fargo, Moorhead and West Fargo. For more information, visit

theartspartnership.net.