25th Anniversary? Perhaps!
For as long as we can remember, we have identified our charter cruise programs as “The Gold Standard for Jazz at Sea Since 2001.” While that is a true statement, our company was actually formed 25 years ago this month. Yes, Jazz Cruises, which became Entertainment Cruise Productions, which reverted back to Jazz Cruises and is now known as Signature Cruise Experiences was formed on June 14, 2000.
Does this mean that we are celebrating our 25th Anniversary as a company? Perhaps! Technically, 2025 is the 26th year we have been operating, but, in terms of counting years from our beginning to now, we have been operating for 25 years.
Even thought we’re not sure which is right, for the sake of simplicity, we have been sailing since 2001, but we have been operating since 2000. We love to celebrate, so we are declaring Saturday, June 14, 2025, as our 25th Anniversary!
A more formal celebration will be forthcoming, but, for now, we will simply enjoy the fact that we have survived 9/11, Hurricane Sandy, two nationwide financial crises and the Pandemic! Most importantly, we have sailed over 100 times, entertained thousands of guests and featured hundreds and hundreds of musicians.
Along the way, we have made a lot of friends and had a great time doing so. We owe you, our guests, everything in the world and we hope to continue showing you how much you mean to us for many years.
Journey of Jazz ’25
Sailing in 93 Days!
Some Staterooms Are Still Available! Final Days Sale to Sail!
It has been several years since we have sailed on the West Coast and equally long ago since we curated on land excursions for our guests.
But, when we learned of a 7-day/7-night cruise on our favorite ship, Celebrity Summit, which was sailing from Vancouver to Los Angeles with stops in Victoria and San Francisco, we jumped! So did our cruisers.
Journey of Jazz ’25 is 97% reserved, making it one of the most popular first-time programs in our 25+ year history. And, why not? The lineup is amazing, one of our very best, and, in addition to our customary 200+ hours of entertainment onboard, there are spectacular excursions for you when we are in Victoria and San Francisco. To learn more about the music and the excursions, check out the website
25th Anniversary Special Offer:
Final Days Sale to Sail!
There is still time to reserve a stateroom for Journey of Jazz ’25. The remaining inventory includes a dozen or so Veranda Staterooms and some Inside Staterooms.
For a limited time, these staterooms are being offered at the lowest Cruise Prices of the program.
| Category | # | Cruise Price |
| Veranda (V4) | 15 | $3,340 |
| Inside (I2) | 20 | $2,000 |
Cruise Prices are per person and based upon double occupancy. This promotion is for new reservations only and may not be added to other discounts or offers.
You may complete a reservation online or by calling the office. No promo code is required. These Cruise Prices are displayed on the website.
The Roots of Michael McDonald
We’re excited that Michael McDonald, who has sailed with us on The Smooth Jazz Cruise and who co-hosted the McDonald-LaBelle Cruise, will be performing on David Foster: The Hitman Cruise in January.
Most of us know Michael’s numerous hits, from his lead vocals on those Doobie Brothers‘ songs like, “What a Fool Believes,” “Minute by Minute” and “Takin’ It To the Streets,” to his solo career with tunes like “I Keep Forgettin’,” “Ya Mo B There” and of course, “On My Own” with Patti LaBelle (featuring David Foster on keyboards), but what about his music and his life before that massive success? He sang background vocals on Steely Dan hits like “Peg” and “Black Friday.” During the sailings of The Smooth Jazz Cruise ’23, Michael sat down with host Marcus Miller and detailed his “overnight success” that took more than a few years.
It all started in Kirkwood, Missouri (yes, not far from the SCE offices in St. Louis and the same hometown that produced David Sanborn) where he was born and raised and was exposed to the music of Ray Charles through his aunt and mother, who both owned copies of Ray Charles’ classic The Modern Sounds of Country Music, which, along with the music of Nat King Cole, would become a formative influence on a young McDonald. “I loved that album,” he explained to Marcus. “I laid on my back on the floor with my head between those speakers and listened to that for probably a thousand times.”
No surprise that those same ears that earlier were stuck between speakers listening to Charles and Cole, would be the same ones that he would use to learn tunes on the piano. “I just learned songs on the radio, you know? To this day, half the time I’m not sure what key I’m in when I’m playing, I’m just doing it by instinct and memorizing the chords.”
Michael would go on to play keyboards and rhythm guitar in a succession of local rock and pop bands, including Mike and the Majestics, Jerry Jay and the Sheratons, The Reeb-Toors/Younger Brothers and the Guild. Amazingly, during that knock-around period, McDonald and friends as a local club’s house band would back legends like B.B. King, Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry. But it was a stint with a local band called Blue that McDonald was discovered by RCA staff producer Rick Jarrod who offered him a record contract and brought him to Los Angeles.
It was there in Los Angeles, that McDonald caught on as a background vocalist and later got his entry into the Doobie Brothers around 1975 when Tom Johnston, founding member and songwriter of many of the band’s early hits, had to come off the road with an illness in the middle of the tour. The guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, who had played with McDonald with Steely Dan, recommended McDonald as a fill-in, saying that they’d not only get a vocalist but a keyboardist too. “They didn’t even have time to audition me. I just showed up in New Orleans and we rehearsed the show and in two days we were finishing out the tour. I came to find out that they wanted me to stay on afterwards, so I did the next record with them and just became real fast friends with the guys, Tommy included.” In fact, Michael still plays and sings with the group, who tour regularly.
The rest is history, which is well documented in the popular Netflix documentary Yacht Rock, in which Michael is prominently featured. You can hear more of Michael’s story in the interview that Marcus did, in this episode of the Jazz Cruises Conversations podcast. We’re looking forward to seeing the great Michael McDonald performing during the upcoming David Foster: The Hitman Cruise.
– Lee Mergner
Janis Siegel Sailing Solo
We like to say that this is Janis Siegel’s first sailing on The Jazz Cruise, but that’s not really accurate. The renowned vocalist sailed with us as a member of the seminal vocal group The Manhattan Transfer about 10 years ago. Long considered, along with Take 6, the preeminent vocal jazz group, as well a perennial poll and GRAMMY® winner, that influential quartet performed their final concert on December 15, 2023 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.
Janis joined The Manhattan Transfer in 1972, but throughout her years with the group she maintained an active solo career, releasing more than a dozen albums as a leader. On her most recent album, Colors of My Life, she joined forces with The Manhattan Transfer’s longtime music director, pianist Yaron Gershovsky, to celebrate the songbook of Cy Coleman, whose musicals included Sweet Charity and City of Angels.
Truly a singer’s singer, Janis also co-hosts Singers Unlimited, a radio show on WBGO in Newark, NJ, in which she not only spins jazz vocal cuts, but also interviews, with her co-host Lezlie Harrison, many of her peers in the vocal jazz community, including several who have sailed on our programs, such as Dianne Reeves, Kurt Elling, Nnenna Freelon, Veronica Swift and Jazzmeia Horn. The show airs on WBGO on Saturday and Sunday mornings from 8-10 AM, and Thursday morning from 6-8 AM, but you can listen to past shows here.
This will be Janis’s first sailing as the leader of her own group, which features pianist John di Martino, bassist Boris Kozlov and drummer Vince Cherico.
“I am really looking forward to presenting my new recording project The Art of Vocalese during the cruise.” she says. “This is an album very close to my heart. As a member of The Manhattan Transfer, my group and I explored many facets of this vocal art form, almost from our inception in 1972 and we were blessed to know and work with two pioneers of vocalese – Eddie Jefferson and Jon Hendricks. This record is really a love letter to Jon and I am thrilled to be presenting some lyrics of his that, to my knowledge, have never been recorded or, at the least, have been under-recorded. I made this CD with John di Martino, who did all the arrangements.
“For us, it is a full circle of sorts since we first met on The Jazz Cruise, when John was playing with Houston Person and I was performing with The Manhattan Transfer. I sat in with John at the jam session for several nights and immediately recognized his mastery and his love of singers and songs.”
– Lee Mergner
Christian McBride’s History as an Artistic Director
Christian McBride’s World at Sea is not Christian’s first rodeo, at least in terms of curating a festival or event. For more than two decades, the bassist/bandleader has been the artistic director for several of the most prestigious jazz festivals and events in the world. One of the biggest opportunities initially came from the LA Philharmonic back in 2006, when Laura Connelly reached out to Christian to ask him to be the artistic director of its jazz series held at both the Hollywood Bowl and Walt Disney Concert Hall. For the next four years, he would produce concerts there including an historic one featuring his lifelong hero James Brown, revisiting the music from Soul on Top. The Godfather of Soul was not the only R&B great who would get the McBride Touch. How about Queen Latifah singing jazz standards? Or rock star Bruce Hornsby showing off his pianistic chops? Christian learned then and there that to sell more than 10,000 tickets for concerts in a jazz series, you better bring some celebrity and star power along with your usual jazz suspects.
Over the years, Christian would be offered other opportunities to curate programs for jazz organizations all over the country, not all of which involved selling tickets. Most jazz fans might not know about Jazz Aspen Snowmass (JAS) Academy, but like Vail Jazz, the Stanford Jazz Workshop and Jazz Port Townsend (where Jeff Hamilton first discovered Diana Krall), that summer jazz education program has produced so many young jazz stars, including many who have sailed on our jazz programs. Since 2000, Christian has been the artistic director for the JAS Academy Summer Sessions. He would apply the lessons learned from that program to his work with Jazz House KiDS in Montclair, NJ, yet another jazz education program that has produced many a jazz pro.
Of course, Christian also programs the Montclair Jazz Festival, presented by the Jazz House in his hometown. Since its humble beginnings in 2009, this free outdoor festival held in mid-September has grown to become the largest jazz festival in the New York City area, attended by more than 20,000 people. Among the festival’s headliners over the years are Monty Alexander, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Eddie Palmieri, Lisa Fischer and many other jazz greats.
In 2004, The National Jazz Museum of Harlem (NJMH) enlisted Christian as its artistic director, a position he shares with fellow GRAMMY® award-winner Jon Batiste. The NJMH presents over 120 free and low-cost workshops, performances and events every year, including tapings of Christian’s interview show The Lowdown for SiriusXM.
The New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) brought Christian aboard in 2012 as its artistic advisor for jazz programming, in order to program not only its jazz series throughout the year, but also the TD James Moody Festival, which includes the prestigious Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition with whom Christian serves as one of the judges. Among the winners in that competition are Samara Joy, Jazzmeia Horn and Tyreek McDole, each of whom have sailed with us on The Jazz Cruise.
The Newport Jazz Festival, founded by George Wein in 1954, is rightfully considered the grandparent and gold standard of all jazz festivals. In 2016, George handed the reins for the curation of the festival to Christian, who works closely with executive director Jay Sweet to present this iconic three-day event in early August every year. Last year, for the first time since 1969, the festival sold out for all three days. This year’s festival, which will feature headliners such as Dianne Reeves, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Ron Carter, esperanza spalding and The Roots, is well on its way to another sellout for all three days. Appearing at Newport this year will be the Christian McBride Big Band, who are a central part of the programming for McBride’s World at Sea.
Christian admits that when he was first approached by SCE’s Michael Lazaroff to host his own cruise, he thought that he would be programming it like he’s done with so many of the festivals. “I was surprised when he told me that he wanted to build the cruise around me and my groups,” Christian said. “No one has ever asked me to do that before.” The result is a cruise program that will feature not only several of his bands, but also an all-star lineup of guest vocalists like Samara Joy, Ledisi, Angélique Kidjo, José James, Cécile McLorin Salvant and Melissa Walker, all curated by the best artistic director in jazz.
– Lee Mergner
Signature Cruise Experiences’ Programs
JOURNEY OF JAZZ ’25
Over 97% Reserved !
DAVID FOSTER: THE HITMAN CRUISE
is in Open Booking
CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE’S WORLD AT SEA
is in Open Booking
THE JAZZ CRUISE ’26
is in Open Booking
THE SMOOTH JAZZ CRUISE ‘26.1 & 26.2
are Fully Reserved
THE TOP SHELF COUNTRY CRUISE
is in Open Booking
THE SMOOTH JAZZ CRUISE ‘26.3
is in Open Booking
