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Sean Wayland was born in 1969 in Sydney, Australia.
His was a musical family, his father's love of jazz enabled Sean to hear the music of Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea and others as a young child. His father's mother Muriel Cohen was a concert pianist and the first Australian to perform Olivier Messiaen's Catalogue D'Oiseax publicly. To this day Sean is still entranced by Debussy and Messiaen.
Perhaps intimidated by living up to his family's talent, Sean chose to study the violin as a child. His interest in the piano increased and as a teenager he fooled around on the instrument. The fact that he was already an accomplished fiddler and had a busy schedule playing with school orchestras etc meant that he had little time to practise piano.
In his final year of high school Sean met jazz pianist John Bostok. At the time in Australia it was difficult to find out about jazz and John hipped Sean to the music of Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock and John Coltrane.
After school Sean spent a couple of years at University studying Electrical Engineering, but the seed had been sown and he came to realise that his calling in life was to be a musician.
Sean studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 1992 and 1993. He has had numerous piano teachers including Mike Nock, Roger Frampton, Judy Bailey, Paul Macnamara, Barry Harris, Kevin Hayes and Bruce Barth.
While at the Conservatorium he received the Jack Chrostowski piano award. In 1993 he was a finalist in the National Jazz Piano Awards at the Wangaratta Festival.
In 1999 Sean recieved a grant from the Australia Council to study jazz piano in New York which helped him to relocate there.
He has played with Cornell Dupree, Jackie Orsascky, Dale Barlow, Bernie McGann, Steve Mckenna, Jesse Harris, Gerald Hayes and many others.
As well as recording his own CDs he has appeared on numerous other jazz releases including albums by Tim Hopkins, Banana, John Mackie and Nick McBride and Luca Benedetti.
Sean has recorded numerous critically acclaimed CDs which feature his original compositions. They include:
Fangin (SEED 001) with Adam Armstrong and Nick McBride; Stolen Van (RUFUS 035) featuring works by contempory songwriters such as Steely Dan and Elvis Costello; Stevo (SEED 002) featuring Adam Nussbaum and Dennis Irwin; and 99 (SEED 004) with Seamus Blake (Mingus Big Band), Alvester Garnett (Regina Carter), Steve Kirby (Elvin Jones) and others;South Pacific Soul (SEED 005);Colossus of Rhodes (DIW) with Matt Penman and Jochen Ruckert; Lurline(SEED 006) with Matt Penman and Jochen Ruckert.
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