With his latest original project Ready singer, songwriter, guitarist Sean Sullivan serves up a savory gumbo of jazz, blues and folksy flavors from his own distinctive melting pot. The southern-born native New Yorker believes family heritage is a key ingredient to his soulful recipe. “My activist mother was born in West Virginia of French and Cherokee descent. Her father was a Nazarene minister and his father was a Bible-totin’ circuit rider (c.c.rider). So now I’m preachin’ in a sense, from my own peculiar pulpit.”

Add to this rural rouille a measure of urban bohemia. “When I was a child we moved to the Bahamas for a year and then to New York’s Upper West Side. Mom had danced with Martha Graham and wrote poetry, and my stepfather had a jazz radio show and painted profusely. They were both professional freelance writers and avid music lovers. My earliest performances were at these groovy soirees we had at home.

They would bring me out to do my impersonations of Joe Cocker, Sinatra, The Beatles or Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. Though my folks were wild and heavy at times, I’m grateful for their example, the atmosphere of constant and flamboyant creativity, their passion for the arts and the education they worked hard to provide.”

It was while attending the arts-oriented New Lincoln School that Sean began playing guitar, singing in musicals and assemblies, and performing with the school choir. A simultaneous interest in classic fiction was further ignited at Wesleyan University, where he earned a degree in English Literature. While there he continued a wide range of musical studies. “With the Wesleyan singers I performed Gregorian chants, madrigals and avant-garde music. One score had us banging on junkyard metal and making nonsense sounds. Wesleyan pioneered the ‘world music’ scene. There were enough fascinating concerts and teachers to spin even the most jaded western mind. It was a global village .”

After college Sean started playing professionally in the Boston area while studying jazz formally at Berklee College of Music and classical guitar at the New England Conservatory. Following a period of solo gigs in the United States and Puerto Rico he finally returned to New York. “Arnie Lawrence at the New School heard a demo tape I’d made and invited me down to study jazz. The first day I walked in and there was Jon Hendricks telling stories to a class taught by his daughter, Michelle. I was stunned. After all, I’d been listening to his music since early childhood. Gimme That Wine, Cloudburst and all those Lambert, Hendricks & Ross tunes were family heirlooms.” Sean and Jon formed an immediate friendship finding many common points - a love of literature, Native American ancestry and above all, jazz vocalese, blues, bebop and scat singing. Sean began to learn from Jon both in and out of a school setting, absorbing his wisdom as an improviser and as a lyricist.

Through his association with Jon, Sean met and gigged with a host of New York’s finest musicians including tenor sax legend David “Fathead” Newman (featured on the CD Ready) and the late pianist/singer Teri Thornton. “I feel incredibly blessed to have hung out with greats like Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, Joe Williams, Oscar Brown Jr., Abbey Lincoln and many others. These encounters and the school of gigs have shaped me and kept me in the game.”

For songwriting inspiration, Sean credits the mastery of over two hundred tunes from bebop to bossa to blues to tin pan alley to singer-songwriters as the guiding force behind his work. “There is a reason this material is timeless; intelligent lyrics and melody are inseparable, nothing is wasted and the song forms still work.” In light of his travels and family background he adds, “I’m equally at home with the down-home blues, Gershwin, Jobim, or James Taylor and I think this is apparent in my own music.”

He says of his latest original project, Ready, “These songs reflect what folks have responded to in live performance. They really dig my blues material, the variety of grooves, and the lyrics. It’s a grassroots process evolved by the give and take.” In any case, Sean says of his musical motivations, “I just want to preach, laugh, shout, cry, and give the people a little piece of me while still being true to the spirit of the great masters in the here and now.”

A recipient of the John Lennon Songwriting Award for his jazz composition ‘American Jones’ (EMI, 2000), and again in 2003 for Sugar On The Rim, Sean has been featured at such major venues as the Newport Jazz Festival at Saratoga, the Mellon Jazz Festival in Philadelphia, the Time-Warner American Music Festival in Rochester, the NAMM show, Birdland, Iridium, and the recent premiere of NETAID at the United Nations. He has also taught vocal jazz at such renowned institutions as the NYU School of Music, JazzMobile and the Vermont Jazz Center. Previous recordings include American Jones & Why Not.