“Here’s to great music, delicious food, and the comforts of home—three of the best things in life!”
Sharon O'Connor
Sharon O’Connor is a lucky person who has managed to build a career around her passions. She has traveled the world working with great chefs and musicians—bringing together food, music, art, and travel—to create three different series Menus and Music, MusicCooks, and the MusicCooks Travel Series.
After graduating from the University of California with degrees in music and sociology, Sharon studied at the renowned Amsterdam Conservatory of Music. At the same time she explored another treasure of European culture…its cuisine! Traveling throughout Europe, she experienced cooking that centuries of culture have elevated to an art form.
In her remarkable career as a musician, Sharon has performed with famed musicians such as Tony Bennett, Aretha Franklin, John Williams, Ella Fitzgerald, Linda Ronstadt, Carlos Santana, Art Pepper, Boz Scaggs, Dionne Warwick, and Frank Sinatra. She founded the San Francisco String Quartet, and for sixteen years the quartet concertized, recorded, and performed every week in the gorgeous Garden Court of San Francisco’s Palace Hotel.
When Sharon founded Menus and Music, she became the first person to ever package a cookbook with music. She is the author of 19 cookbooks that have sold millions of copies and the producer of more than 30 music recordings. Sharon next created MusicCooks, boxed sets with great music and her own recipes, and MusicCooks Travel sets with music and recipes by chefs at beloved destinations worldwide. She is now working on seasonal collections for her Menus and Music catalogs and also is a judge for the James Beard Awards. Sharon O’Connor lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.