Chris Donnelly
Applied Piano
Chris Donnelly is an official Steinway artist, an instructor at the University of Toronto, an associate composer at the Canadian Music Centre, and has been nominated for two Juno Awards. Trained simultaneously as a classical pianist and a jazz pianist, his genre-bending repertoire is an eclectic mix of jazz, ragtime, stride, gospel, improvisation, original compositions and classical music.
In September 2008, Chris released his Juno-nominated, debut album with Alma Records called ‘Solo,’ featuring a blend of original material and arrangements of jazz standards. This also earned him nominations for ‘Best Recording of the Year’ and ‘Best Keyboardist of the Year’ from the 2009 National Jazz Awards.
Chris is a member of Myriad3, a contemporary jazz trio playing mostly original music that features different aspects of jazz improvisation, ensemble performance and contemporary composition. The band has released 5 albums on Alma Records/Universal: Tell (2012); The Where (2014); Tell((Chip)) (2015); Moons (2016); and Vera (2018). The Where was nominated for a Juno Award and a Sirius Radio XM Indie Music Award in 2015.
Chris is also an experienced electronic music producer and sound designer. In 2016, he started “Gruber Music,” an avenue for electronic music and experimentation. He has since released 17+ albums of original electronic music and video game covers, 6+ hours of composition tutorials, and 25,000+ words on jazz piano. Using Ableton Live, MilkyTracker, Pico-8, and Wwise, Chris has contributed music and sound effects to countless video games including Slipways (2021), Traplabs (2018), UnDUNE II (2022), and Dank Tomb (2017). In 2017, Chris joined PEARL lab at the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital where they are developing music therapy based technologies and video games for young people with disabilities.