Bellbird

Bellbird is a collective born out of a shared love and curiosity for jazz and improvised music. Though their fundamental sound is rooted in modern jazz, their music stretches the boundaries of the jazz genre by incorporating influences from various styles, utilizing folk melodies, atonal counterpoint, and indie rock grooves. Each musician contributes distinct influences representing their disparate musical upbringings, creating a playful balance between noisy experimentation and more traditional compositional elements. The four members of Bellbird met in Montreal’s diverse musical landscape in 2021 and quickly recognized each other as kindred musical spirits.

Bellbird’s debut album Root In Tandem (2023) was recorded during the winter at a lakeside cottage in Saint Zenon, Quebec. Bellbird celebrated the release of this album with a tour through Ontario and Quebec that fall. Root In Tandem was met with exhilarating press, including a review from Dan McClenaghan from All About Jazz, saying “They are a deliberative collective, If there is madness to the music there is also a deep method to it” and another from Rhythm Changes (Vancouver) writer Will Chernoff: “It's joyous and possibly even therapeutic to hear these four each contribute something from their ongoing creative practices to a well-balanced new group.” 

In the summer of 2024, Bellbird embarked on a tour of Canadian jazz festivals, performing their music in 11 cities and 7 provinces. Later that fall, the quartet participated in an artistic residency at Orford Musique, where they developed new techniques for collective composition and wrote the music for their upcoming second album. In alignment with the band’s belief that humankind’s relationship to the greater ecosystems of the earth is one of reciprocity, the songs for this new album were born out of a desire to honour the non-human sounds that are becoming lost in the unfolding climate crisis, and the need to engage with post-colonial ways of thinking about so-called natural phenomena. This music was recorded at Hotel2Tango studio in December 2024. Bellbird signed with the Montreal label, Constellation Records, with whom they will release their second album, The Call, in February, 2026. 

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