The Lavender/Shell Duo

Scott Lavender’s professional career might best be described as eclectic. With musical interests ranging from rock to classical to jazz he continues to be active in many different aspects of the music business. He has served as music director for folk singer Glenn Yarbrough, classic jazz stylist Toni Tennille, and currently works as singer Johnny Mathis’s conductor and pianist, a job which affords him the opportunity to work with many of the best orchestras and musicians across the country. Mr. Lavender holds a Piano Performance degree from Bowling Green(Ohio) State University, pursued post-graduate study at North Texas State where he played with the 1 o’clock and 2 o’clock bands, and earned a Masters degree in Instrumental Conducting from Cal State Northridge. His CD, “Prime Time,” was released by Radio Mafia Records and features original compositions performed by his No Fault Big Band, an all-star aggregation of LA studio musicians. In addition to writing for jazz band, Scott has also orchestrated, arranged or composed more than 200 pieces for symphony orchestra including his latest composition, “Overture for Tomorrow,” which he premiered in concert recently conducting the San Francisco Symphony. His original compositions for school orchestra can be found in the Alfred and Lucks Music catalogs. Recently he arranged, orchestrated, and conducted music from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story score featured in three highly-acclaimed TV commercials for the “Gap” clothing stores. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Carolyn, son John Scott, and daughter Elizabeth and enjoys ping pong, softball, tennis and fine cigars.
Cellist Roger Shell is a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music where he was a scholarship student of Harvey Shapiro, earning both his Bachelor and Master degrees. Since leaving Juilliard he has served as principal cellist with such groups as the American Symphony Orchestra, Solisti New York, the American Theater Orchestra, New York Pops and Philharmonia Virtuosi.
He has also performed with the New York City Opera, the New Jersey Symphony, Steve Reich and Musicians, An Die Musik, &the OK Mozart Festival, the Hudson Highlands Chamber Music Festival and performs regularly on Broadway.
Mr. Shell has performed concertos with the American Symphony at Carnegie Hall, Philharmonia Virtuosi at Town Hall and SUNY Purchase, the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra at Weill Hall. He has appeared numerous times on National Public Television and Radio, Live from Lincoln Center, Great Performances, A&E, MTV, and Performance today on NPR and various New York area classical Radio Stations.

Roger has toured the United States, Canada, Europe, South America, Korea, Hong Kong, Japan and the Caribbean.
He recorded for RCA Victor, BMG, Sony, Telarc, Angel, Sine Qua Non, Camden and ESSA.Y, including the Vivaldi double cello concerto for RCA and several chamber music recordings for the ESS.A.Y label.