Jim Lewis

Jim Lewis has been a full time Faculty member since 2011, and has been Jazz Area Head since 2018. In 2004 he completed a Masters Degree in Performance (Concentration in Jazz) at the University of Louisville, where he studied trumpet performance with Dr. Michael Tunnell, composition and arranging with John La Barbera and improvisation with Jamey Aebersold.

​

He has adjudicated festivals and presented workshops across Canada, in the U.S.A. and Europe, including clinics, research papers and performing groups at the International Association of Jazz Educators Conferences in Chicago, New York, Anaheim, and New Orleans.

​ Jim also continues a long career as a freelance trumpet player, improviser, composer & arranger.

Early performance and recording credits include Rainer Weins’ Silk Stockings (Donde esta el Mercado). Over the years Jim has performed and recorded with many of Canada’s finest improvisers, including the Frank Lozano Group (Colour Fields), Christine Duncan’s Element Choir (Live at Rosedale United, Element Choir & William Parker – At Christ Church Deer Park ), Mark Segger Sextet (The Beginning, Lift Off), an improvising trio with Andrew Downing and Jean Martin (On a Short Path From Memory to Forgotten) the Juno (2015) nominated Bristles Trio with Andrew Downing and David Occhipinti (Bristles) Noam Lemish Twelve, and Avi Granite’s Verse and AG6.

In 2014, he was featured at the FONT (Festival of New Trumpet Music) Canada Festival in Montreal. Jim can be heard in clubs in the Toronto area, and across the country as a sideman with various other groups, and has played Jazz Festivals across Canada, and in the United States and Europe, with many of Canada’s most creative jazz musicians and improvisers.