- March 25, 2025
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The first time Ed Linehan saw his future wife, Synia Carroll, was around 2000. He didn’t know Carroll at the time, but she caught his eye when he and his three sons stopped to watch her tell a children’s story during an arts festival on the village green in New Haven, Connecticut.
“There was something mesmerizing about her. She was bigger than the place,” recalled Linehan, the former president of the Jazz Club of Sarasota, where he is still on the board.
It would be another 10 years before fate brought Carroll and Linehan, both employees in the City of New Haven’s school system, together as husband and wife. After both of their previous marriages ended in divorce, their romance began in one of New Haven’s famous pizza parlors.
On March 14, Linehan and the rest of Tampa Bay’s jazz community had to say goodbye to the scintillating presence known as Synia Carroll. She died a week after her 67th birthday from a fast-moving illness diagnosed late last year.
“We had 10 exciting years together in Sarasota,” Linehan said in a telephone interview on March 21. “We thought we had more time.”
“I’m blessed to have so many wonderful, inspiring and supportive friends and family in my life,” Carroll posted on Facebook on Jan. 1. “I’m blessed to have music as a source of energy, inspiration and comfort. So on this first day of 2025, I want to say ‘thank you’ with all my heart to everyone who is a part of my life no matter how small. You are part of the tapestry that is me.”
A native of Philadelphia, Carroll was surrounded by music as a child. She began writing her own songs and was performing with a guitar by the age of 12. She earned a full music scholarship to Chestnut Hill College, but decided to attend Wesleyan University, where she majored in Spanish literature.
After graduating, Carroll moved to New York City and began performing Caribbean music and working as a vocalist in recording sessions. After a number of years singing with the band Mikata, she settled for the stability of teaching Spanish to middle- and high-school students, and to raising her daughter Janina and son Jesse.
It wasn’t until she and Linehan moved to Sarasota in 2014 that she began performing again regularly, first at open-mic nights in Sarasota and in St. Petersburg before getting her own bookings at clubs and concertss.
She first started out singing blues, but after a performance at the old Five O’Clock Club on Hillview Street, she was advised to try jazz. “Finding my voice in jazz was like coming home,” she told the website AllAboutJazz.com.
It wasn’t long before Linehan used his organizational skills to book his wife into music venues around the Tampa Bay area and build a database so fans could be informed of her next appearance.
Linehan’s efforts at promoting Carroll’s career caught the attention of the Jazz Club of Sarasota, where the former school system administrator became president in 2018.
During his five-year tenure, Linehan tripled the club’s membership to 1,500 members. He was also instrumental in luring jazz artists from the other side of the Skyway Bridge to perform in Sarasota.
Many of these artists, now fixtures at Jazz Club series such as Jazz @ Two on Fridays at the Unitarian Universalists of Sarasota, Monday Night Jazz at Florida Studio Theatre’s Court Cabaret and Sarasota Art Museum’s monthly Thursday night jazz, were musicians that Linehan met through Carroll.
“She went over to St. Pete, where she met musicians like Alejandro Arenas of La Lucha, Jeremy Carter, Paul Gavin and James Suggs,” Linehan recalled. “I met them through her. When I had the opportunity, I started bringing them to Sarasota.”
At the same time, Carroll was expanding her ever-growing audience. In 2023, she was named a creative fellow of the Palladium performing arts center at St. Petersburg College. The following year, Carroll released her second CD, “Water is My Song.” Her first CD, “Here’s To You,” featuring Miami pianist Billy Marcus, a frequent collaborator, was well-received when it debuted in 2016.
Linehan attributed his wife’s success to her desire to grow and constantly keep improving, even if it meant taking a trip to Brazil to learn about the music scene there.
The acclaim was unanimous after Carroll made an unscheduled appearance during the 2023 Sarasota Jazz Festival in Nathan Benderson Park. When the headliner canceled due to illness, Carroll performed for more than an hour with Philly-based trumpeter Terell Stafford, who programs the annual jazz fest in Sarasota.
“I think that was her most exciting appearance ever,” Linehan says. “She was on her way to the pinnacle.”
After word of Carroll’s death began to spread through the Tampa Bay jazz community, fans and collaborators took to Facebook to pay tribute to her. “She was a dynamic, passionate and charismatic performer who touched many lives,” posted the Tampa Jazz Club on its website.
“Synia Carroll was an immensely gifted vocalist and a unique performer,” musician and University of South Florida faculty member Simon Lasky posted. “(S)he was a force of nature: No matter a big concert hall (with a knowledgeable, attentive audience) or a tiny wine bar (with no one listening!) Synia had the ability to grab the audience by the scruff of the neck and bring them along with her.”
Carroll’s friends had organized a benefit for her at the Palladium on May 8 to help with health care expenses. Instead, it will be a celebration of her life, Linehan said. A Sarasota memorial will be held at 3 p.m. on Saturday, April 26 at Unitarian Universalists, 3975 Fruitville Road.
