Sean O'Connell

After graduating from the Orange County High School of the Arts, pianist and author Sean J. O’Connell earned a B.A. in Ethnomusicology from UCLA, where he studied with jazz legends Kenny Burrell, Billy Higgins, and Barbara Morrison. He completed his M.A. in Musicology at CSULB where he concentrated on Duke Ellington’s year on the West Coast.

As a side musician, O’Connell has played enduring southern California music venues such as Segerstrom Concert Hall, Royce Hall and the Troubadour. As a bandleader, he has headlined slightly smaller venues such as the Echo, the Jazz Bakery and the Mint. Through it all he has engaged in boots-on-the-ground music journalism.

O’Connell earned his first music journalism paycheck writing for the OC Weekly. He worked his way through the alt-weekly coalmines, providing hundreds of articles for publications such as the LA Weekly, the LA Record, the Village Voice, SF Weekly and LA CityBeat. He has since contributed pop music criticism to national publications such as the Los Angeles Times, DownBeat and Westways magazine, notably profiling music festivals in Cape Town, Monterey, Montreal and New York. His book Los Angeles’s Central Avenue Jazz is a pictorial history of Los Angeles’s rich jazz history told through his large collection of artifacts including matchbooks, publicity photos and rare album art.