Sara Niemietz

Sara Niemietz, born June 7, 1992, in the United States, is a singer-songwriter, actress, and guitarist based in Los Angeles, California. Her performing career began at age four, when B.J. Thomas invited her onstage and she sang "Hooked on a Feeling" before a live audience. Thomas, audibly surprised, remarked that she knew all the words to his songs.

Niemietz began delivering stage performances in Chicago and on Broadway starting at age nine. Her professional theater career opened on April 19, 2002, at the Goodman Theater in Chicago, where she originated the role of young Helen — the younger version of Carol Burnett — in the pre-Broadway production of Hollywood Arms, a stage adaptation of Burnett's memoirs. She played the character in the 1941-era first act, with Donna Lynne Champlin portraying Helen in the second act. The production subsequently moved to Broadway, where Niemietz performed 76 performances at age ten. While in New York, she also played the lead character in Pamela's First Musical at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, a production adapted from Wendy Wasserstein's children's book with music by Cy Coleman and lyrics by David Zippel.

Her stage work continued in Los Angeles, where in 2007 she was cast as Patrice in the Los Angeles premiere of Jason Robert Brown and Dan Elish's musical 13 at the Mark Taper Forum. Director Todd Graff identified Niemietz as the "rock" of the cast, and she was one of four actors from the workshop production to carry over into the premiere. The all-teenage production received a nomination for the 2007 LA Stage Alliance Ovation Award for World Premiere Musical. In 2013, Niemietz was cast as Wanda in a one-night-only performance of Enter Laughing, The Musical on January 28, honoring Carl Reiner's seventy-fifth year in the entertainment industry. She reprised the role of Wanda in a full production of the same musical in 2015 at the Wallis Annenberg Theater in Beverly Hills.

Beyond the stage, Niemietz accumulated a range of film and television credits. She played Polly in the 2006 feature film Akeelah and the Bee and served as the credited vocalist on the soundtrack for The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), working with film composer Christopher Young. She is also the guitarist on the 2010 season of the television series Glee. Niemietz graduated from Saugus High School in 2010, where she maintained an A-level GPA, participated in the theater department, and played Luisa in the school's production of The Fantasticks during her senior year. She is also a graduate of the Barbizon School of Acting and Modeling in Chicago.

Following high school, Niemietz partnered with Emmy Award-winning composer W.G. Snuffy Walden and Taylor Made Studios to produce the EPs Push Play and Christmas Favorites, along with numerous music videos. Her YouTube channel surpassed 25 million views, with a cover of Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" alone drawing 7 million views and attracting the attention of Ellen DeGeneres. Niemietz appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres Show in May 2011, and in January 2012 she charted at number 14 on Billboard magazine's Next Big Sound chart. Walden serves as her regular co-writer and long-time accompanist; together they co-wrote "Set You Free" for Phil Scarpaci's 2011 film In the Key of Eli and "Never Too Far From Home," which Niemietz performs in the 2012 short film Stetson, Street Dog of Park City.

Niemietz reunited with B.J. Thomas in 2012, recording a duet of "Hooked on a Feeling" for his album The Living Room Sessions (2013), approximately fifteen years after their first impromptu performance together. On June 28, 2013, the two performed the song together at the Grand Ole Opry. She is also a featured artist on Richard Marx's PBS live television special and 2012 album A Night Out with Friends, performing a duet of his number-one Adult Contemporary hit "Keep Coming Back," and she joined Marx again for a duet of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" on his Christmas album Christmas Spirit (2012).

Niemietz co-wrote the song "Feeling for You" with Melissa Manchester for Manchester's album You Gotta Love the Life (2015), with Keb' Mo' producing the track and playing guitar. The song was pre-released as a single on January 9, 2015, and debuted at number two on the Smooth Jazz charts. The album reached number 17 on the Billboard Jazz Albums chart for the week of February 28, 2015. In May 2014, Niemietz performed with Mary Ann Mobley at the tenth annual What a Pair! benefit for cancer research at the Saban Theater in Beverly Hills.

Niemietz is a regular cast member with Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox, appearing on a dozen of the ensemble's albums, a PBS television special, and an MTV music video. Her first collaborative video with the group featured a swing arrangement of Talking Heads' "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)," released on August 20, 2015. Subsequent Postmodern Jukebox videos included a rendition of Outkast's "Hey Ya!" and a Dixieland arrangement of Justin Bieber's "Love Yourself," the latter of which was covered by Time magazine. In November 2015, she joined the group's U.S. Northeastern tour, which concluded at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on December 11, 2015. On March 26, 2016, she performed with Postmodern Jukebox at the Dubai Jazz Festival, and she continued with the ensemble through a 75-show European Union tour that ended in Istanbul, Turkey on June 3, 2016. In August 2016, she released an additional video with the group performing "I Will Survive." Niemietz also released her own EP, Fountain & Vine, on September 22, 2015, with "Taxi Outside" as its first video single.