2021-2022
Jazz Events
Ken Page
Masterclass Series
Fridays on Zoom: 3:15-4:30
Public Welcome
2022
Jan 21, 2022 - Darren McGill (recording engineer)
From working under veteran producer Eric Ratz, to a two-year stint at iconic Toronto studio Phase One, Darren brings a wealth of experience to his work at Union Sound Company. A natural collaborator, he
works closely with each artist to create the unique palette of sounds that will define their recordings. Darren prides himself on creating a positive environment that allows his clients to feel comfortable and perform at their best!
CLIENTS:
THE DIRTY NIL,
CROWN LANDS
READY THE PRINCE
MONOWHALES
PUP
Feb 4, 2022 - Amy Cervini
Singer Amy Cervini has the big ears and free spirit to reach far and wide for great material, whether it's Rodgers & Hammerstein or Lyle Lovett, Blossom Dearie or Willie Nelson. In June 2018, the Toronto-bred, New York-based vocalist will release her fifth solo album and third for Anzic Records: No One Ever Tells You. Her previous records established Cervini as a distinct talent on the North American scene for her intrepid sense of song and pure-toned, ever-swinging delivery. 1/3 of the acclaimed vocal group Duchess, Cervini has performed around the world from Jerusalem to Monterey, CA in concert halls including Carnegie Hall to jazz clubs including The Jazz Standard. Her performances have been praised far and wide. The New York Times has enthused over her as "a thoughtful and broad-minded jazz singer," while the All Music Guide recommends her recordings for the "honest, self-assured and honey-dripping presence clearly heard."
Feb 11, 2022- Virginia MacDonald
2020 International Clarinetist Corona Competition first prize winner Virginia MacDonald has established herself as a respected and sought after musician in the Canadian jazz scene. Virginia has worked extensively as a leader and side woman across Canada. She is currently based in Toronto, where she performs regularly at venues including Koerner Hall, The Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, The Jazz Bistro, and The Rex Hotel. She has performed in Canadian and International jazz festivals including The Cambridge Jazz Festival, the Jaipur Jazz & Blues Festival, the TD Toronto Jazz Festival, the TD Halifax Jazz Festival, the TD Markham Jazz Festival and the Cape Bre-ton Jazz Festival.
Virginia has had the opportunity to work internationally in the United States, India, and Europe. Recently, Virginia appeared on Juno Award-winning saxophonist Kirk MacDon-ald's album "Generations" alongside the great Harold Mabern. Known for her lyrical and soulful clarinet playing, Virginia has been described as a "powerful new voice in the Ca-nadian scene" by Juno Award-winning bassist Mike Downes.
In addition to her busy performance schedule, Virginia is an in-demand educator and has given masterclasses at St. FX University, McGill University, the Global Music Insti-tute, and the True School of Music. Virginia is a faculty member at the Bob Mover Acad-emy of Music.
March 4, 2022 - Benny Benack III
By age 28, trumpeter and singer Benny Benack III has proven to be a rare talent: not only a fiery trumpet player with a stirring command of the postbop trumpet vernacular in the vein of Kenny Dorham and Blue Mitchell, but also a singer with a sly, mature, naturally expressive delivery in the post-Sinatra mold, performing standards and his own astute songs with a thrilling sense of showmanship. His superb intonation and bracing virtuosity enable him to handle astounding feats of originally composed vocalese (complex solos with written lyrics). And he’s a highly capable pianist as well.
Benny performs widely as a frontman for Postmodern Jukebox, the vintage music collective famed for canny old-school covers of modern pop. In early 2020, he released A Lot of Livin’ to Do, the follow-up to his well-received 2017 debut album, One of a Kind. This sophomore effort, richly varied in mood and brimming with bop inflection, features bassist extraordinaire Christian McBride and drummer/producer Ulysses Owens, Jr., as well as the radiant Takeshi Ohbayashi on piano and Rhodes.
Benny’s been showcased in international headliner tours at Jazz at Lincoln Center Shanghai, JALC’s “NY Jazz All-Stars” (Mexico) and extensively all over Asia and Europe. He has headlined domestic tours around the U.S. including the Vail Jazz Party, Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival, Pittsburgh JazzLive International, the Vancouver Jazz Festival and the Summer Solstice Jazz Festival in East Lansing, MI, to name a few. Benny's been featured at Birdland, Mezzrow, Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle and other leading New York venues. Alongside his work as a leader, he has played in the house band for NBC’s “Maya & Marty,” and appeared as a trumpet soloist across genres with the Christian McBride Big Band, Diplo/Major Lazer, Ann Hampton Callaway, Melissa Errico, Josh Groban, Ben Folds, fashion icon Isaac Mizrahi and more.
Benny was a 2014 finalist in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Trumpet Competition, and winner of the 2011 Carmine Caruso International Trumpet Competition. He is highly sought after as a clinician and educator, leading workshops for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Jazz for Young People program, as well as the New York Youth Symphony’s Education department. In 2020 he will lead a panel at the annual Jazz Congress on Audience Engagement, together with Christian McBride, Marilyn Maye and Veronica Swift.
Benny Benack III endorses P. Mauriat Trumpets, Torpedo Bag Cases, CarolBrass Flugelhorn and X-Suit Menswear.
https://www.bennybenackjazz.com/
March 18, 2022 - Remy LeBoeuf Quintet
Remy Le Boeuf is a Grammy-nominated composer and saxophonist whose music is rooted in the jazz tradition and overlaps into the contemporary classical realm, drawing on various influences from Aaron Copland to Charles Mingus. Le Boeuf is also the founder and director of the Assembly of Shadows jazz orchestra. He has worked with a range of collaborators including the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, HAIM, JACK Quartet, Knower, Linda Oh, and his identical twin brother Pascal, with whom he co-leads the Grammy-nominated ensemble, Le Boeuf Brothers.
Hailed by the New York Times for its “overwhelming beauty,” Le Boeuf’s latest release for jazz orchestra, Assembly of Shadows (2019), brings together haunting cinematic textures and melody-driven themes. Praised by the San Francisco Chronicle for its “radiant, uncluttered beauty,” Le Boeuf’s prior release, Light as a Word (2019), features a sextet of Le Boeuf’s long-time collaborators including Walter Smith III, Aaron Parks, Charles Altura, Matt Brewer, and Peter Kronreif.
Le Boeuf has received commissions and awards from SFJAZZ, Chamber Music America, The Jerome Foundation, Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Symphonic Jazz Orchestra, Copland House, Copland Fund, National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, American Composers Forum, Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation, New York Youth Symphony, University of Denver, Keio University, BMI, and the ASCAP Foundation.
Le Boeuf holds bachelor's and master's degrees in saxophone performance from the Manhattan School of Music. He currently lives in Brooklyn, NY, where he teaches at the Manhattan School of Music.
2021
October 8th 2021 - Luis Deniz
Winner of the Grand Prix de Jazz General Motors 2006 at the Montreal Jazz Festival (David Virelles Quintet) and Galaxie Rising Star 2010 at the Halifax Jazz Festival (Rich Brown & Rinsethealgorithm), Grammy Nominated and Juno Award Winning artist (Hilario Duran Latin Jazz Big Band), alto saxophonist Luis Deniz was born in Camaguey, Cuba on April 21st, 1983. In 1993, Luis started his musical studies at the Escuela Vocacional de Arte Luis Casas Romero in his hometown of Camaguey, where he subsequently continued at
the Escuela Profesional de Musica Jose White. Luis later moved to the Cuban capital, where he gratuated at the prestigious Escuela Nacional de Musica (ENA), the alma mater of several of Cuba's most prominent musicians. After graduating with high honors, he was awarded 1st place at the international jazz competition JOJAZZ, held in Havana (2003). Luis also kept a busy schedule, both teaching saxophone at the National School of Music and playing locally and touring internationally as well, Luis has performed and given workshops all over Cuba, Australia, Japan, USA, Canada, Bermuda, Spain, Germany, France, Belgium, England, Ireland, Scotland, Luxembourg and Switzerland.
Upon his arrival in Toronto in 2004, Deniz has performed/recorded with some of Toronto and International most outstanding musicians, including Mark Turner, Tony Allen (Fela Kuti) Hilario Duran, Luis Mario Ochoa, Paquito D Rivera, Horacio El Negro Hernandez, Reg Schwager, Dafnis Prieto, Francisco Mela, Barry Romberg, Darren Sigesmund, Cubanismo, Rich Brown's Rinsethealgorithm and Rich Brown & The Abeng (currently), Mark Kelso & the jazz Exiles, NOJO, Kirk MacDonald Jazz Orchestra, Roberto Occhipinti, Canadian Idol jazz Orchestra, The Art of Jazz Orchestra, Jane Bunnett, Canada’s Global Orchestra Kune, among others. He has also shared the stage with international figures such as Barry Harris, Howard Johnson, Ray Vega, Steve Turre, Randy Brecker, Donald Harrison, Ingrid Jensen, Mark Feldman, Gary Versace and Hermeto Pascoal. One of the highlights of Luis’s career has been as educator as well, acting as a part time faculty member at Toronto’s Humber College, imparting private saxophone lessons and as a small and large ensemble instructor. With an impressive career as a sideman and saxophonist, Luis keeps on working on his own development.
In 2010 he was awarded a Canada Council for the Arts Grant to study with innovative saxophonist Greg Osby in New York City. With all these achievements, Luis Deniz is definitely a name to look for in the future of jazz. His Debut album as a soloist is set to be released in the spring of 2022. Luis plays exclusively Yamaha Saxophones, Gonzalez reeds and BG France accessories.
Oct 22. - Darcy James Argue
Argue made his mark with his critically acclaimed 2009 debut Infernal Machines. 2013 saw the release of Brooklyn Babylon, which, like Infernal Machines before it, earned the group nominations for both GRAMMY and JUNO Awards. His most recent recording, Real Enemies, released in the fall of 2016, earned a third consecutive GRAMMY nomination and has been praised as “wildly discursive, twitchily allusive, a work of furious ambition… deeply in tune with our present moment” by The New York Times’ Nate Chinen.
Proclaimed “a mind-blowing example of truly great, era-defining jazz composition, and a contender for album of the year” by London Jazz News’ John L. Walters, Real Enemies is a 13-chapter exploration of America’s fascination with conspiracy theories and the politics of paranoia. The album grew out of a multimedia work Argue co-created with writer-director Isaac Butler and filmmaker Peter Nigrini for the 2015 BAM Next Wave Festival, in a uniquely immersive experience that Stereophile’s Fred Kaplan called “a remarkable work, maybe an oddball masterpiece: riveting, head-spinning, at once spooky and witty, abstrusely complex and foot-tappingly propulsive.” The multimedia performance was next staged at the 2016 Holland Festival, a production JazzNu’s Rinus van der Heijden praised as “a visual and auditive spectacle without precedent, which overwhelms, dwarfs, and makes you aware that innovation in music theatre is still possible.” Argue recently collaborated with vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant, arranging, orchestrating, and conducting her “macabre, majestically relevant” (New York Music Daily) original song cycle Ogresse, which premiered in September 2018 to a standing-room only crowd at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. JazzTimes’ Matthew Kassel calls Ogresse “a daring, and genre-defying, departure… a grand synthesis of jazz, musical theater, mythology, visual art, cooking, fashion, acting, race, sexuality.”
Secret Society maintains a busy touring schedule, with European, Canadian, and South American tours, global festival performances, and four appearances at the Newport Jazz Festival. Secret Society’s performances have been celebrated for their “slashing fury and awesome full-ensemble precision” (The New York City Jazz Record), “brilliant soundscapes” (Globe and Mail) and “gorgeous musical details, maneuvers and transformations” (Ottawa Citizen). Their London Jazz Festival debut was declared “a contender for gig of the year” by The Guardian.
In addition to his work with Secret Society, Argue has toured Australia and New Zealand leading the Jazzgroove Mothership Orchestra and was featured in the Orquestra Jazz de Matosinhos’ inaugural international Jazz Composers Forum. He has led performances of his music by the WDR Big Band, the Danish Radio Big Band, the Frankfurt Radio Bigband, the Cologne Contemporary Jazz Orchestra, the Big Band Palácio das Artes, and the West Point Jazz Knights. Argue has composed works for chamber duo and string quartet, art songs for Newspeak, and created arrangements for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. He has conducted residencies and workshops at the University of North Texas, McGill University, the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, Cornish College, Western Connecticut State University, and with the Western Australian Jazz Youth Orchestra, among others. In 2012, he was composer-in-residence for Missouri State University’s annual Composition Festival.
In 2015, Argue was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition and a Doris Duke Artist Award. He has received commissions from the Fromm Music Foundation, the Jazz Gallery, the Manhattan New Music Project, the Jerome Foundation, and BAM, as well as ensembles including the Danish Radio Big Band, the Hard Rubber Orchestra, the West Point Jazz Knights, and the Orquestra Jazz de Matosinhos. He is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, New Music USA, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Composers Now, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the MacDowell Colony.
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Oct 29 - Fabiano Chagas
Fabiano Chagas is considered one of the most versatile guitar players of the new generation in Brazil. His influences go from Brazilian Popular Music to Jazz, passing through Classical and Regional Folk Music. Since 2008, he has taken part in several shows, concerts and tours around the world, playing at important festivals in Ukraine, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, England, United States, Portugal, and Holland. As an educator, he has given workshops and masterclasses about improvisation, acoustic (nylon) and electric guitar at many Brazilian and foreign universities. Viena Conservatory, University North Texas, Utah State University, Unirio are among the institutions Fabiano Chagas has visited. Master of Music since 2009, Fabiano Chagas is professor of acoustic popular guitar, electric guitar and improvisation at the School of Music and Performing Arts of the Federal University of Goias (EMAC - UFG). Since 2019 he is the conductor of the prestigious Banda Pequi (Brazilian Big Band). His last album called “Tributum” was recorded in EUA, Belgium and Brazil, including special guests - clarinetist Anat Cohen and the American saxophonist Mark Turner.
The Rex
UofT Jazz students perform every Monday of the school year at the Rex Hotel.
These events are open to the public.
Set 1: 5:30 – 6:15
Set 2: 6:30 – 7:15
February 7th:
5:30 pm: Sam Little Ensemble
Saxophone: Fabian Nunez-Ramos
Trumpet: Riley Kelly
Guitar: Stuart Elliot
Bass: Sam Little
Drums: Colton Mobray
6:30 pm: Lauren Falls Ensemble
Voice: Michelle DePalma
Saxophone: Logan Lee
Trombone: Isaac Kashino
Guitar: Eric Placenis
Piano: Elliot Baranthin
Bass: Lauren Falls
Drums: Regan Mowery
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February 14th:
5:30 pm: Michael Herring Ensemble
Saxophone: Tim Mundy
Guitar: Eric Placenis
Piano: Andrew (Henry) Lewis
Bass: Michael Herring
Drums: Regan Mowery
6:30 pm: Dan Fortin Ensemble
Saxophone: Jakob Durst
Saxophone: Hanson Joel Goldwin
Piano: Diego Talbot
Bass: Iggy Jarzabek
Drums: Pablo Marin Marquez
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February 21st - Reading Week
Independent Projects TBA
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February 28th:
5:30 pm: Hannah Barstow Ensemble
Voice: Kathleen Kovacs
Trombone: Matteo Grassia
Guitar: Ethan Woitas
Piano: Noah Marx
Bass: Adrian Russouw
Drums: Ambrose Veno
6:30 pm: Patrick O’Reilly Ensemble
Voice: Lili Abramovich
Saxophone: Peter Kang
Guitar: Ethan Woitas
Piano: Jake Laur
Bass: Liam Ernst-Selway
Drums: Carlan Pulkkinen
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March 7th:
5:30 pm: Don Englert Ensemble
Saxophone: Peter Cohen
Guitar: Samuel Brock-Mahood
Piano: Dash Cole
Bass: Will Moszynski
Drums: Yabo Li
6:30 pm: Jon Maharaj Ensemble
Voice: Alyssa Datu
Saxophone: Omar Yazaw
Saxophone: Hayden Stapleton
Piano: Philip Jimenez
Bass: NONE
Drums: Kieran Smith
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March 14th:
5:30 pm: John MacLeod Ensemble
Saxophone: Dermot O’Halloran
Saxophone: Nigel Luke
Guitar: Justin Schatz
Piano: Cameron Baguley
Bass: Adrian Lo
Drums: Arlo Filazek
6:30 pm: Jacqueline Teh Ensemble
Voice: Sasha Melnyk
Voice: Aida Gholami
Voice: Andrew Lowe
Voice: Adriana Malandrino
Voice: Taisiya Sarkisova
Piano: Elliot Barenthin
Bass: Matthew Leombruni
Drums: Ezra Schell
Upper Jazz Concerts
UofT small ensembles perform on Wednesdays in Upper Jazz at 90 Wellesley St. W.
These concerts are free and open to the general public.
Set 1: 7:00 – 7:45
Set 2: 8:00 - 8:45
Cancelled due to COVID restrictions.
We hope to restart the Concert series in the fall of 2022
Walter Hall
A limited number of Faculty of Music students, faculty and staff are
able to attend this performance in-person. Please visit the Concert Registration page on the Performance Office SharePoint site for details and to register to attend.
November 17th
Jim Lewis 12tet
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November 24th
*POSTPONED* Jason Logue 12tet
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March 9th
Jason Logue 12tet
featuring Tara Davidson (sax) and Will Carn (trombone)
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March 16th
Vocal Jazz Ensemble
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March 30th
Jim Lewis 12tet
featuring Rich Brown (bass)
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Please visit our social media pages for more info!
Jazz at the New Music Festival
Feb 6th:
DOG Ensemble
Andrew Downing Hybrid Ensemble
More details coming soon!
U of T Jazz at the Tranzac Club
Information coming soon!