Pianist, composer, and producer Lawrence Sieberth is at home in virtually any musical setting. His own playing draws on neo-bop improvisation, classical training, and world-music influences, and his composing extends to television, film, and the stage — a musical vocabulary built for whatever the room needs.
His albums as a leader trace a wide arc: Heartstrings, singled out by Jazziz in 1995; Arkipelago, where funk and second-line rhythms meet the ethereal; New New Orleans, a solo-piano survey of traditional repertoire; Silhouettes, his quartet in acoustic contemporary-jazz mode; Estrella Banda, turning toward Afro-Cuban and funk rhythms; It's Magic, a collaboration with vocalist Germaine Bazzle; and An Evening in Paris (2020), recorded in Paris with French musicians Stéphane Guillaume and Michel Benita and Louisiana expatriate Jeff Boudreaux.
In New Orleans, Sieberth is a fixture. He has been a regular featured artist and musical director at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival for more than 30 years, and his collaborators read like a roll call of the city's music: Johnny Adams, Charles Neville, Allen Toussaint, Irma Thomas, Tony Dagradi, John Vidacovich, Luther Kent, Victor Goines, and Jason Marsalis, among others. He tours with Gerald French & the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band and with Bazzle, and his years of solo-piano residencies — twelve at Mr. B's, plus the Windsor Court, the Sazerac Lounge, and Ralph's on the Park — made him part of the city's dining-room soundtrack. An eighteen-year run as the pianist at Gino's in Baton Rouge, documented on 1991's I Migliori: Live at Gino's, made that room the most successful jazz venue in the city's history.
On September 30, he pairs with singer-pianist Sam Kuslan for a duo night at Snug Harbor — two generations of New Orleans piano on one stage.