Vancouver-born guitarist/composer David Blake has been making a name for himself in New York’s vibrant contemporary jazz community in recent years. “With engaging melodies in the forefront, underscored by intricate harmonies and shifting time signatures” (All About Jazz), the Brooklyn-based Blake leads a quartet featuring some of NYCs finest, most dynamic players in pianist Dabin […]

Jillian Lebeck’s Starlight explores a dreamland that ranges from British jazz soundscapes, 1960s American pop, 21st-century classical, chamber jazz, and modern Canadian jazz. Vancouver-based pianist, composer, and vocalist Jillian Lebeck is one of the most exciting voices on the Canadian Jazz scene. An alumni of the prestigious Berklee College of Music, Jillian has worked with […]

Wendy Eisenberg has spent the past decade as a fixture of independent music and an artist of inspired multiplicity. As a singer-songwriter, improviser, and virtuoso guitarist, the coordinates of their artistry are ever-shifting, from art-rock to jazz to blistering free improv and eloquent folk. The poetic, formally daring folk songs of her new album Wendy […]

Vancouver-based saxophonist Erika Chow's General Assembly is a new ensemble dedicated to playing the music of the late, great, Wayne Shorter. The group made its debut in August, 2025 as a quartet, but has recently expanded to a quintet, adding trumpet to allow the band to explore more of Shorter's extensive repertoire. From the early […]

Multiple JUNO and National Jazz Award-winning trumpeter/composer Brad Turner has been an enormously influential figure on the Vancouver jazz scene for over three decades, having co-founded Metalwood and worked with artists such as Joe Lovano, Kenny Wheeler, John Scofield, Renee Rosnes, Ingrid Jensen, Seamus Blake, and Kenny Werner. His Quartet with Bruno Hubert piano, André […]

Steve Gunn is a New York-based guitarist and songwriter who’s been at the vanguard of guitar-oriented experimental, psych-folk and indie rock for over a decade. On 2025’s, Daylight Daylight, his first singer-songwriter release since 2021’s Other You, Gunn uses negative space as effectively as he uses loping melodies and quietly observational lyrics. “Listening to it […]

Malleus Trio are Vancouver-based instrumentalists who fuse high-octane improvisation with dynamic, locked-in original compositions. Having forged their musical rapport for over a decade, there’s palpable chemistry between drummer Ben Brown, tenor saxophonist Dominic Conway, and bassist Geordie Hart, and their language speaks to both familiarity and risk. For this Festival performance, that musical conversation will […]

A Canadian musician with global persuasions, Curtis Andrews specializes in South Indian percussion, West African drum/dance, drumset, and mbira. Born and raised in coastal Newfoundland but based in Vancouver since 2009, the percussionist/composer’s award-winning ensemble draws from a trove of world-jazz compositions that artfully point in the direction of South India and West Africa. Heavy […]

Sean Cronin is a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who lives in Catskill, NY. His dad played with Ian Tyson and his mom worked for Parks Canada. He enjoys other singer/songwriters such as Harry Partch, John Prine, and Jelly Roll Morton. His current band, Gory Dove, is an anagram of his former band, Very Good. In each […]

Vocalist Sofia Avelino is a Brazilian-Canadian musician with a passion for fostering community through music. Featuring music that ranges from high-energy sambas to heart-wrenching ballads, Como Nossos Pais (“like our parents") pays tribute to the giants of MPB–also known as Música popular brasileira–and celebrates a generation of Brazilian music that revisited tradition while challenging the […]

Come experience the results of a remarkable jazz intensive! The VYJO program is a unique music residency for Metro Vancouver high school students, co-presented by Coastal Jazz, the Vancouver Jazz Orchestra, and Vancouver Community College. Through five weeks of rehearsals, the teens cultivate their talents through mentorship from members of the VJO, including Vancouver Youth […]

Throughout her six-decade musical journey, pianist, organist, vocalist, and newly minted NEA Jazz Master Amina Claudine Myers has consistently defied conventional boundaries while drawing from her rich roots in Baptist and Methodist church music, gospel, and rhythm and blues. Her album Solace of the Mind is a deeply personal exploration of musical evolution, and an […]

Led by bassist and composer Cole Woodland, the Woodland Critter Quartet draws influence from post-bop, souljazz, fusion, and the avant-garde, as well as artists like Jeff Parker, Petter Eldh, and Wayne Shorter, to create dynamic performances that range from the sincere to the absurd. Cole calls on some of the city’s most innovative and deeply-invested […]

There’s a wild expansiveness to the sound of percussionist Ben Brown and pianist Stefan Christoff, an unbound and inspired collaboration that invokes light, sky, and the endless ocean. Glimpses of stillness peer through the chaotic world, and profound spontaneity takes magnificent shape. Sun 13 said of their 2025 debut In Duet, that "in much the […]