Sara Wildavsky was born in Oberlin, Ohio in 1962 and spent her formative years in London, England. In the 1970s, she lived with her mother and three brothers eight hundred feet from Abbey Road Studios. During this time, she attended Hampstead Comprehensive School and studied at The Center for Young Musicians on Saturdays.

When she was seventeen, she attended UC Berkeley, soon becoming ill with mononucleosis and pneumonia at the same time. Shortly afterwards, she stopped playing music.

While she eventually attended architecture school at UC Berkeley, she was never able to complete a full year of study. She ultimately transferred to Evergreen College, getting credit for her life thus far and obtaining her B.A. degree in Expressive Arts after spending five weeks on campus.

By 1991, she was incapacitated for a total of almost six months every year. However, she still dreamed of returning to music. Despite not having played for more than twelve years, she auditioned for a jazz program at The Mannes College of New York, was accepted, and enjoyed a full year of both health and music without a single day of incapacitation.

She played trombone in numerous salsa bands between 1992 and 1999, including Wayne Gorbea’s Salsa Picante and Maxima Potencia. However, her health started to deteriorate, and she stopped playing music once again. During a period of recovery in 1990 she began to paint on silk, and musical themes ultimately began to appear in her paintings. Sara believes that this was a form of grief, since she missed both music and her fellow musicians deeply.

Sara briefly led a twelve-piece band, Salsa Profundo, and then a nine-piece band, Havana Gila, before giving up music once again in 2007.

Nine years later, she began to make art regularly during healthy times and found it much easier than music to pick up after periods of incapacitation.

She currently has over five hundred pieces of art available for sale and, most recently, has taken up the ukulele, which she plays in a duo with violist and vocalist Pamela Hamilton. The name of the group is “Pammy Hammy & The Wild Woman,” reflecting their nicknames for each other from their days at music school 35 years ago.