The Sound Wall Music Initiative

SUNDAY EVENING DINNER & SHOW

Join us for an unforgettable evening featuring acclaimed jazz vocalist Cindy Scott. Your ticket includes a New Orleans inspired small plate dinner prepared by Chef Chris Wilton, followed by an intimate live jazz show. Savor an evening of gourmet dining and the soulful, mesmerizing vocals of Cindy Scott.

*venue is BYOB

CINDY SCOTT

Cindy Scott is a passionate, risk-taking heart-singer who isn’t afraid to reveal her emotions in song. Cindy has walked a different path from the average jazz singer. Born and raised in a house full of music and musicians, she chose flute as her first instrument and went to LSU on a music scholarship. Uncertain about life as a professional musician but positive she wanted to travel the world, Cindy got an MBA, learned to speak German and Spanish, and spent several years living and working abroad. During one of these stints she discovered jazz and began singing in the jazz cellars of Germany with local musicians.

Cindy eventually found herself in Houston climbing the corporate ladder by day and playing jazz clubs by night. In 2005, she traded a successful business career for a life devoted to music and moved to New Orleans just months before Hurricane Katrina hit. She decided to return and complete her Masters in Music (Jazz Studies) from the University of New Orleans, a program founded by famed educator Ellis Marsalis and now led by guitar icon Steve Masakowski. She is now firmly rooted in the rich and diverse music scene of the Crescent City.

Cindy has found a happy marriage between her straight-ahead roots and the musical gumbo that pervades New Orleans. She always sings music she connects with, whether jazz standards, unexpected genre-bending choices, or her own originals. Her last CD, Let the Devil Take Tomorrow, was voted New Orleans’ Best Contemporary Jazz Recording, a huge honor in a field that included projects by Christian Scott and Donald Harrison. The recording was also listed in Offbeat Magazine’s top 40 Louisiana releases in all genres.

Cindy’s most recent studio recording is entitled Historia. Her amazing band includes pianist Randy Porter, bassist Dan Loomis, drummer Jamison Ross, along with Brian Seeger on guitar, Evan Christopher on clarinet, and Shannon Powell on tambourine. Four-time GRAMMY nominee jazz vocalist Karrin Allyson makes a special appearance on two tracks, as well. The recording, which is a blend of jazz standards and Cindy’s original songwriting, pays homage to her deep musical roots, the lessons she learned from her family, and the discoveries she’s made along the way throughout her own life. In his review of Historia, C. Michael Bailey (All About Jazz) says Scott’s new CD is “all that jazz is.”

Cindy has a new CD in the works which has lots of original content as well as carefully curated material about affirmation, healing and social justice. Look for it to be released sometime in 2020.

Cindy is a full-time Associate Professor in the Voice Depeartment at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. She teaches all manner of singing-related things and is a Somatic Voicework (TM) specialist. Her recent teaching residences have included the Berklee Vocal Summit, Mining for Magic – New Orleans (www.miningformagic.com), the Colorado Roots Music Camp, and the Hot House Music School in Derby, UK.

Cindy Scott has shared the stage with Mark Murphy, Karrin Allyson, Roseanna Vitro, Randy Porter, Badal Roy, Carlos Malta, Herlin Riley, and Ellis Marsalis, among many others.

Cindy plays regularly in New Orleans and Boston and has had recent performances in Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Spain and Mexico, as well as in US cities including New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, and Kansas City. She has appeared at festivals around the world, including the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and the North Sea Jazz Festival.

BRIAN SEEGER

Dubbed “One of New Orleans’ best jazz guitarists,” by Gambit Weekly, Brian Seeger is on the forefront of the New Orleans music scene. His performance and recording credits include Aaron Neville, Big John Patton, Chris Wood, Jason Marsalis, Bobby Previte, Rakalam Bob Moses, Stanton Moore, Evan Christopher, Karrin Allyson, Evan Christopher, Johnny Vidacovich, Gerald French, Shannon Powell, Nicholas Payton, Herlin Riley, Davell Crawford, Jo Lawry, Sara Caswell, Skerik, Charlie Hunter, Theresa Andersson, Ed Petersen, Zachary Richard, Rebecca Paris, Ike Sturm, Tamara Lukasheva, Cindy Scott, Brad Walker, the Organic Trio and many others (click here for the big picture). His 1999 selection by New Orleans Magazine as one of their “Jazz All-Stars” (other honorees that year: Irving Mayfield, Davell Crawford and Ricky Sebastian) is a fitting summation of his stature in the local music community.

Currently, Brian works extensively with the Organic Trio, Cindy Scott and Brad Walker, logging nearly 100,000 miles a year touring. He has performed all over the US and Canada, as well as in Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, the Czech Republic, Equador, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Kazakhstan, Luxembourg, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, Peurto Rico, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Switzerland and Turkey.

Brian is comfortable off of the stage as well, garnering critical acclaim for his work as a record producer and composer. His production credits include The Paislies debut disc on Fresh Sound, Extended’s Without Notice, the Session’s This is Who We Are. Camile Baudoin’s Old Bayou Blues, Brad Walker’s Quintet, Alex Bosworth’s Here for You, Alex Bosworth and Hank Mackie’s The Night We Called it a Day, Martin Urbach’s Free Will, Cindy Scott’s Let the Devil Take Tomorrow, Jirka Hala’s Make You Wanna Hala, Quintology’s eponymous debut, The Hot Club of New Orleans’ More, Chévere’s Baila Mi Ritmo, Olivier Bou’s Bou-Shah-O-Ray, a disc that features Nicholas Payton, Steve Masakowski, and Stanton Moore, and The Jesse Lewis Union, as well as demo CDs for a number of his friends and peers. (Seeger’s Wikipedia page may have the most complete discography.) His compositions appear on the Organic Trio’s Saturn’s Spell and Home Remembered, Cindy Scott’s Let the Devil Take Tomorrow and Historia, Alex Bosworth’s Here for You, Theresa Andersson’s Vibes, two of Stanton Moore’s solo efforts, Quintology’s Blues by 5, Joe Krown’s Funk Yard, and on other recordings. He holds a Bachelor of Music, summa cum laude, from the prestigious Berklee College of Music, and also holds a Master’s degree in Jazz Performance from the University of New Orleans.

In the last two decades, Brian has found some time to share his experience and insights with the next generation of creative musicians. He currently holds the Coca-Cola Endowed Chair in Jazz Studies in the esteemed University of New Orleans Jazz Studies program founded by Ellis Marsalis. He has also taught at Loyola University and was the director of the National Guitar Workshop’s Jam Summit. Seeger has been a guest clinician and lecturer at many other jazz camps, colleges and schools around the world. In 2019, Seeger, Cindy Scott and Karla Mundy launched Mining for Magic, an intensive artist development workshop for singers.

Besides his life as a musician, Brian has spent a lot of time traveling, in front of computers, and behind the stove. He spent a couple of years exploring India, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Greece (the hippy years), hitchhiking, and sleeping in caves, ashrams, and olive groves, and financing his exploits by playing music on the streets. He has also traveled to Austria, the British Virgin Islands, England, Hungary, St. Maarten, the US Virgin Islands, Yugoslavia, and to airports in Denmark, Egypt (where he was thrown in jail), Pakistan and the UAE, and rode a truck through Bulgaria. He has visited and performed in Europe more than fifty times. He was a youthful hacker, and has done graphic design, web site creation and Perl scripting, and artwork for many musicians (Astral Project, 3 Now 4, Quintology, etc). He also has owned a vegetarian restaurant, where he was cook, waiter, accountant, and the entertainment, and can still whip up some mean pancakes when called upon, or a Tiramisu if he really loves you. When he has to, he can be good with electricity and plumbing, too.

Seeger has suffered from low vision since childhood. He has an uncorrectable and uncurable genetic condition called Juvenile X-linked Retinoschisis that causes a progressibely deteriorating deformation of the retina. It doesn’t make his vision blurry per se, just lacking detail. As such, he is not allowed to drive (although he is actually a pretty good driver), and has to have strong lighting and hold his face very close to the page to read music, and magnifying and reading glasses are strewn around his house. Seeger attributes some of his hearing skills to the fact that he was never able to learn anything about playing an instrument by watching someone’s hands.