Some performances creep up on you. Others hit you the moment the first note leaves the singer’s mouth.

Twenty-year-old Sarah Omar falls firmly into the latter.

The set-up is understated: star cloth backdrop, grand piano, a single mic. Sarah walks on—poised, elegant, sequinned black dress, pearls catching the light—and then it happens. She sings. And that’s when the hair on the back of your neck stands to attention.

Over the next hour, she threads magic through a setlist that could have been lifted from the Great American Songbook’s top shelf: Body and Soul, Misty, But Not For Me, Cole Porter’s Night and Day, a Duke Ellington double—And You Never Will and In a Sentimental Mood—then Cheek to Cheek, My Funny Valentine (which has couples leaning just that little bit closer), Dream a Little Dream, Someone to Watch Over Me, and Burt Bacharach’s This Guy’s in Love with You, whose final notes practically blew the doors off the place.

This is a pure voice. Immaculate phrasing, just the right kiss of reverb for an Ella-style performance. No unnecessary warbling, no “why sing one note when you can sing twenty?” pyrotechnics—just the kind of vocal control and emotional truth you can’t teach. And she acts every lyric with class and restraint.

On piano, Lewis James — currently training at the Royal Academy of Music—provides the perfect counterbalance. Together, they’re yin and yang in Le Monde’s cocktail-bar glow: elegant, intoxicating, quietly dazzling.

Sarah Omar is a revelation—a voice that comes along once in a while and demands to be experienced.

Le Monde, you’ve found another gem.