June 2009 “SUNFLOWER CAFÉ” was released! Truly a labor of love with light Latin grooves, acoustic jazz, 60’s and 70’s cover tunes, an award winning original, “Pick a Rose”, as well as a medley of standards “Somewhere Over the Rainbow and What a Wonderful World”, a tribute to IZ.
All arrangements, guitars and engineering by Berklee School of Music graduate, Bob Schaller. Drummer Dean Haemel, and cellist fred lieder,
In 2007 "WAVE", an eclectic mix of standards and originals featuring the bossa nova classic by the same name “WAVE” by Atonio Carlos Jobim, was Shawn’s audition CD to Souza Lima in Sao Paulo. She was accepted ! Souza Lima is connected to Berklee School of Music in Boston . Bob and Shawn also released an acoustic traditional holiday record “Peace & Joy” that year.
She was born in Birmingham, AL, raised north of there in Tuscumbia and spoon fed on art and music, played Anne Sullivan in Tuscumbia, Helen Keller's birthplace at Ivy Green, in summer stock using the same pump where Helen spoke her first word. Across the river Shawn was introduced to the music of W.C. Handy, Father of the Blues in Florence, his birthplace, playing all the regional theatres there. The family traveled to places as far away as Kuwait where Shawn played Sally Cato in her first musical MAME at the American Embassy.
She studied theatre at SMU, The Univ of North AL earning a BA, and at The Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, Juilliard, and The Singers Forum, all in NY. She studied voice with The Met’s Nova Thomas and jazz with Amy London at Kaufman Center for Jazz in NYC. Shawn is also passionate about the nylon stringed guitar and has studied privately with Dante Rosotti, Ginger Hildagarde, and Yasha Kofman.
In New York she appeared in soaps, Off-Broadway, prime time TV, and films, as well as a year touring Japan with Rising Star Productions singing standards with pianist Don Russell in the duo “Blue Satin Sound” when she and Don recorded “Eastern Standard Time” on CD Baby.
Start and keep going is her simple truth to life, pick up over the crossroads, choose friends as carefully as you would choose a gift for a special person, and always always …. live with passion!
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