Cynthia
Utterbach
A life lived through music, art and experience.
Singer • Artist • Storyteller • Working Musician
lives here.
Listen to Cynthia
Soulful, sophisticated, and completely her own. Start with the record that introduced her voice to Europe, then follow the thread wherever it goes.
Close Your Eyes
1997 • Remastered 2023
Her debut, cut in Europe with the band she worked with night after night. The remaster brought it back to streaming on Last Kind Jazz — and a deluxe vinyl edition is in the works.
Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, YouTube, Deezer and more — all fourteen tracks.
Selected listening
See her sing
Don't Explain — featuring Alex Sergueenko
Friday Wind Down — with Reggie Carson, WSAV Savannah
Real experiences. Lasting impact.
Decades of rooms, stages and people on three continents. What follows are glimpses on purpose — Cynthia is writing the rest herself.
She was in those rooms.
She landed in Los Angeles at the end of the seventies, when a whole community of singers and players was building something around Leimert Park that people still talk about. She knew them. She worked with them. Some of those names you already know.
Story in progressSix years in one show.
A decade in Europe — festivals, clubs, radio, television — and six straight years in a Hamburg musical. There was also community work in that city she has never talked about publicly. Not yet.
Story in progressShe's in the film. She also wrote the song.
In Margarethe von Trotta's Rosenstrasse she is the singer in the club. One of the two songs she performs on screen carries her own lyrics. Most people who have seen the film never realized both were true.
Verified • 2003Before she was Utterbach, she was Gudger.
Her father was the trumpeter Demas Dean. The Discography of American Historical Recordings puts him on cornet behind Bessie Smith in February 1928, and on trumpet with Noble Sissle's orchestra through the 1930s. Her own first record came in 1967, credited to Cynthia Gudger. The jazz was in the house before she got there.
Noble Sissle and his International Orchestra — from the 1934 session Demas Dean is documented on.
Some of the company she's kept
- Willy Ketzer Trio
- Jan-Peter Klöpfel
- Lars Luis Linek
- Bamboo Bar Quartet, Bangkok
- Savannah Jazz Orchestra All-Stars
- Teddy Adams
- Joanne Bell — Ladies of Jazz
There is a great deal more, and she is putting it in a book. Consider this the trailer.
Art by CynthiaComing Soon
Music is not the only way she works. Original paintings, limited prints and signed editions will be available directly from this page. Sign up and you'll see them first.
Original Works
One-of-one pieces, released as they are finished.
Limited Prints
Numbered runs from selected originals.
Signed Editions
Signed by the artist, in small quantities.
You learned the music.
Now learn the rules of the road.
Real-world knowledge for serious artists, from someone who has actually made a living at this for decades. Not how to sing. How to work.
- Getting the gig
- Approaching venues
- What to charge
- Getting paid
- Bandleaders
- Rehearsal expectations
- Contracts
- Touring & traveling
- Protecting your reputation
- When to say no
- Surviving between gigs
- Getting hired again
The things music school doesn't teach you.
A growing resource
This is being built out as a guide, not a blog post — written from the inside, for musicians who already have the talent and are tired of learning the business the expensive way. The first installment arrives with the October issue of G.U.M.M.
Be first to hear it.
New music, new stories, artwork releases and Working Musician drops — sent before they go anywhere else.
This is just
the beginning.
Booking, media and LK Jazz inquiries — appearances, interviews, music and collaborations.
Contact / Booking