Alex Bird & Ewen Farncombe
AUGUST 23 @ 6PM • TWENTY SIX
Alex Bird is a 2x JUNO-nominated jazz singer, songwriter and actor from Toronto, ON; now residing in the historic town of Cobalt, ON. Ewen Farncombe is a Juno-nominated pianist and composer based out of Toronto and has been a professional on the scene there for nearly a decade.
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Bird & Farncombe surprise-released an 11-song original duo album called “Songwriter” at the end of 2022, also funded thanks to Canada Council For The Arts. The album received glowing accolades from around the world; including from DownBeat Magazine, who wrote, “Impassioned messages sung and played from one’s heart but worn on a well-dressed sleeve. “Songwriter” is an elegant, romantic and well-executed gem of a record.” - Kira Grunenberg. In February of 2024 “Songwriter” was nominated for Best Vocal Jazz at The JUNO Awards.
Alex Dean
AUGUST 25 @ 10:25AM • PORT HOPE UNITED CHURCH
Alex Dean, one of Canada’s foremost jazz saxophonists, has been a mainstay of the Canadian music scene for many years. He has played and recorded with Gil Evans, Kenny Wheeler, Aretha Franklin, Natalie Cole, Harry Connick Jr., Phil Nimmons, the Dave McMurdo Jazz Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra.
Alex held the tenor saxophone chair with Rob McConnell’s Grammy award winning Boss Brass and, the Juno award winning Rob McConnell Tentet. He has collaborated extensively on C.D’s as side man with Canadian and American Jazz Artists. The Alex Dean Quartet/Quintet recordings include the newly released At this Point (November 2010), Dreamsville, Both Feet, and Kaitlyn’s Waltz. Kaitlyn’s Waltz was voted Best Jazz CD of 1994 by The Jazz Report and one of the Top Ten Jazz CD releases by New York’s Village Voice. He was also voted Jazz Musician of the Year by the Toronto Star.
The Alex Dean Quintet in the last couple of years is a relatively new group of highly regarded Canadian jazz artists assembled to record and play original music by Alex – Brian Dickenson, Lorne Lofsky, Kieran Overs and Ted Warren. The Quintet’s latest recording opened to standing room only crowds at Toronto’s Rex Jazz Club in November and will be playing/promoting their newest C.D. at various Jazz Festivals this summer including a feature date at The Toronto Jazz Festival.
Charlotte McAfee-Brunner
AUGUST 23 @ 6:00PM • THE BEAMISH HOUSE
Charlotte McAfee-Brunner is an award-winning trombonist, bandleader and vocalist. Charlotte has been making waves on the Toronto music scene regularly. Her bands include: Charlotte McAfee-Brunner and her Fireflies, Grapevine and Trombone Charlotte’s Tiger Band.
Accomplished in several musical styles, she continues to perform as a sideman with many other excellent groups in Toronto, infusing any room with an undeniable energy. She is part of the Happy Pals, Combo Royale, Thomas Steele’s 10tet, Dennis Kwok Jazz Orchestra, The Magnolia Brass Band, and has been featured with many other groups. With her heart-stipping vocals and compelling trombone solos, Charlotte McAfee-Brunner is a jazz musician and performer you won’t forget and is regularly featured in some of the hottest venues in town.
Colleen Allen
AUGUST 25 @ 4:30PM • PORT HOPE UNITED CHURCH
Colleen Allen is one of Canada's most in-demand musicians for live concerts and recording sessions. Based in Toronto, the acclaimed and versatile multi-instrumentalist has performed all over Canada, the U.S. and Europe with world class jazz and pop artists including Molly Johnson, David Clayton-Thomas, Holly Cole, Emilie-Claire Barlow, Rik Emmett, Marc Jordan, Andrew Craig and Jackie Richardson, to name a few. Known for her warm, authentic tone and soulful style of soloing, she works frequently with Brian Barlow's Big Band, Cirque du Soleil, is a resident artist at Soulpepper Theatre, and a member of Manteca, Canada’s premier fusion jazz big band. She has been in the house band of the Toronto Blues Society’s Women’s Blues Revue since its inception in 1986.
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Colleen is a beloved mentor and teacher of music for 15 years now at Humber College and a regular adjudicator/clinician for musicfest, the TD jazz education festival in Picton and has recently been the artistic director for the Port Hope Jazz Festival.
Duncan Hopkins
AUGUST 25 @ 11:30AM • THE BEAMISH HOUSE
Canadian double bassist, composer and arranger Duncan Hopkins has been working at the highest levels of jazz for almost thirty years. In that time, he has worked with such jazz legends as Norma Winstone, Bobo Stenson, Rob McConnell and the Boss Brass, Scott Hamilton, Houston Person, Warren Vache, Ed Bickert, Mark Murphy, Peter Appleyard, Bobby Watson, Jeremy Pelt, Byron Stripling, Diana Krall, Kenny Wheeler, Sam Rivers, Harry Allen and Edward Simon to name but a few and playing in clubs and venues such as the National Arts Centre in Canada, Royal Festival Hall in England and Carnegie Hall in The United States.
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He can be seen on film in “Where the Truth Lies” featuring Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth. He has toured extensively throughout Canada, Great Britain, Europe, Brazil and the United States. He can be heard on over fifty albums, numerous CBC, BBC, and NPR recordings and has seven recordings as a leader and several others as a co-leader. The new recording Who Are You? released in the summer of 2023 on TPR records has received national and international acclaim and airplay.
Jesse Ryan
AUGUST 24 @ 3:30PM • THE GANARASKA BREWERY
Trinidadian-born Jesse Ryan is a saxophonist and composer with a keen interest in the connections between jazz and Afro-Caribbean musical traditions and in communicating transcendent ideas through his music. His compositions are ambitious and his enchanting sound tells, that he is set to take Caribbean jazz out of its niche of ethnic fusion, and into the mainstream.
He’s the 2020 recipient of the Toronto Arts Foundation’s Emerging Jazz Artist Award - an award that puts a spotlight on emerging jazz musicians with a keen sense of the grand tradition behind jazz music while putting their own stamp on the genre and the Toronto music scene with their unique style and approach.
Joy Lapps
AUGUST 22 @ 6PM • JAZZ IN MEMORIAL PARK
Presented by Port Hope Jazz & Road to Cultivate
Internationally lauded artist, speaker, educator and creative consultant Joy Lapps activates spaces for community building and creative expression. The award-winning instrumentalist of Antiguan and Barbudan descent treats the steelpan as a tool for engagement, anchoring her artistry in a profound, community-centered musical tradition. She aims to amplify women’s contributions in every facet of her work, giving nuanced attention to women of the steelband movement.
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​At her core, Joy connects to music as participatory. The Toronto native has performed alongside Stewart Goodyear, Roberto Occhipinti, Larnell Lewis and the Toronto Mass Choir, and recorded with Gramps Morgan, whose 2022 release Positive Vibration received a GRAMMY nod, Elmer Ferrer, Jeremy Ledbetter, Johnny Reid and her musical mentor, pannist-composer Andy Narell. As a leader, Joy has appeared at music festivals and events across Canada and the US including Montreal International Jazz Festival, the Victoria, Edmonton, Halifax Jazz Festivals, Miami’s Ground Up Fest, Mundial and Folk Alliance. As a part of steelbands, she’s performed at the Queen’s Park Savannah for Panorama Semi-Finals with Birdsong Steel Orchestra, Lamport Stadium for Pan Alive with Pan Masters and Pan Fantasy, Le Petit Journal Jazz Lounge with Calypsociation and at the Brooklyn Museum with Pan Fantasy.
Kellylee Evans
AUGUST 24 @ 7:30PM • PORT HOPE UNITED CHURCH
2018 JUNO nominee Kellylee Evans is a high-octane, chameleon-like performer whose natural charm and improvisational vocal style embody jazz, soul, pop, and hip-hop. The singer-songwriter won a 2011 JUNO Award and has been captivating audiences along the way, opening for stars such as John Legend, George Benson and Willie Nelson.
Lorne Nehring
AUGUST 25 @ 10:25AM • PORT HOPE UNITED CHURCH
Juno Award and Jazz Report-winning drummer, Lorne Matthew Nehring is originally from Montreal where he began playing piano, saxophone and drums. Lorne studied percussion and began his jazz studies at McGill University. He has studied with noted Toronto drum teacher and author Jim Blackley, as well as with American jazz great Keith Copeland in New York City.
Lorne is a much-in-demand musician in all aspects of live performance as well as in the recording studio. “The Tom Reynolds Trio” constitutes Lorne’s primary playing and recording focus at this time. This trio has produced one CD, while the second release is currently in production and is due out soon. Lorne has worked extensively in the theatre, having performed in the orchestras of “Little Shop of Horrors”, “Piaf”, “Dreamland”, “Cookin’ at the Cookery”. In recent years Lorne was heard in the Stratford Festival production of the G.F Walker/John Roby musical, “King Of Thieves”.
Lorne is an accomplished teacher who was the director of, and instructor at the much-respected Drum School at Long & McQuade on Bloor St. in Toronto for fourteen years. Lorne is currently a drum set instructor at Humber College in Toronto. He recently completed a Masters Degree in Jazz Studies at York University focusing his research on the relationship between improvisation and its current and future role in jazz education.
Alex Pangman
AUGUST 24 @ 1PM • THE BEAMISH HOUSE
Although Alex Pangman grew up a couple of generations late to have sung with Teddy Wilson, the vibrant vocalist is proud to be known as Canada's Sweetheart of Swing. With pipes aplenty, Juno nominee Pangman possesses the requisite taste, talent and the historical knowledge of an avid record collector to breathe new life into the sturdy standards of the classic jazz era. She's also a broadcaster on JAZZ.FM91 on her program Swing Set, where she shares the records and stories of the swinging music that began to take shape in the 1920s, hit its stride in the ’30s and ’40s, and continues to be played by artists today.
Michael Shand
AUGUST 23 & 24 @ 10PM • THE BLOU ROOM
Over 30 years of performance worldwide has earned Michael Shand his place in the upper echelon of keyboardists in all of Canada. Despite, in just four years, having achieved a grade 9 Royal Conservatory of Music classical piano certification, his musicality has been deeply rooted in jazz, having been immersed in it since birth in the home. He then went on to study jazz at York University where he was a recipient of the Oscar Peterson Scholarship Award. However, it is the diversity of his musical influences that have uniquely moulded his playing style and made him a top choice for so many artists, across so many genres. Shortly after leaving York, Michael, then 22, was pianist and musical director for the quintet, Kollage, which featured Archie Alleyne and Dougie Richardson, pillars of Canada’s jazz community.​
Mike Downes
AUGUST 22 @ 8:30PM • THE BLOU ROOM
Mike Downes has been leading bands since the early 1990s and has performed with his quartet, trio, 11-piece “In the Current” ensemble and solo bass concerts.
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His original quartet toured Canada and recorded their first album “Forces” to great acclaim. In a review of that album, The Jazz Report wrote “Bassist Mike Downes is one of Canada's immensely talented young giants." “Forces” was followed by “Then” and “The Winds of Change” (Top 10 CDs of 2004 - JazzFM91). Mike formed a new trio and released “Ripple Effect” in 2013 (2014 JUNO award winner - Traditional Jazz Album of the Year), “In the Current” in 2014 (featuring compositions for an 11-piece chamber jazz ensemble), “Root Structure” for quartet in 2017 (2018 JUNO award winner - Jazz Album of the Year - Solo) and “Mind Mirrors” for solo bass in 2022. His most recent project “The Way In” (March 1, 2024 release date) features a core trio of piano, bass and guitar with guest percussionists on 5 of the 11 tracks.
The magic of every one of his live performances is in the joy and interaction between the musicians. Tom Bellaire of Jazz Notes states “"Mike and his choice sidemen splash their personal colours on a work of abstract art, but never lose sight of the fact they are all working on one canvas. They lay out boundaries of improvisation; they blend their colours unselfishly into a masterpiece."
Steve Holt
AUGUST 25 @ 2PM • THE GANARASKA BREWERY
Steve Holt was a child prodigy starting to play piano at the age of four. Born in Montreal Canada, he began his professional career at the age of 17, playing the clubs in and around Montreal. Since that time, Steve has built an international reputation as one of Canada's premier Jazz pianists, having worked with the likes of Archie Shepp, Larry Coryell, Eddie Henderson, Pat Labarbera, James Moody, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, and Michel Urbaniak.
The Shuffle Demons
AUGUST 23 @ 8:00PM • THE GANARASKA HOTEL
The Shuffle Demons are a high-energy Canadian band that blends virtuosic jazz and funk playing with eye-catching costumes and over the top stage antics to produce an incredible show. A hit at festivals all over the world, the Shuffle Demons are a crowd pleasing, full-on musical group that backs up wild stage antics with phenomenal playing by some of Canada's most talented musicians.
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Over the course of their illustrious career The Shuffle Demons have released 10 CDs, 4 hit videos, won several music awards, done numerous tv and radio appearances and toured nationally and internationally including 25 cross Canada tours, 5 US tours, 16 European tours, as well as tours of Mexico, Panama, El Salvador, Guatemala, Brazil, India, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, South America, Aruba and Cuba playing on big festival stages, theatres and clubs.
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The band continues the tradition today with a great line-up of players that includes multiple Juno Award winner Richard Underhill - sax & vox, Matt Lagan - sax & vox, multiple Juno Award winner Kelly Jefferson - sax & vox, multiple Juno Award winner Mike Downes - bass & vox and Juno Award winner Stich Wynston - drums & vox. Expect the same exciting, no holds barred performances that feature wild romps in the crowd, free jazz moments, danceable funk, poetry, killer solos and more.
