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Ryan Oliver

Ryan Oliver’s latest recording STRIVE! is an exciting contemporary jazz record featuring jazz legend Victor Lewis on drums.

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Ryan Oliver’s latest recording STRIVE! is an exciting contemporary jazz record featuring jazz legend Victor Lewis on drums. The group performed several times in Toronto before entering the studio in August of 2012. Featuring 9 of Oliver’s original compositions, STRIVE! captures the dynamic quartet

Juno-nominated, Toronto based saxophonist Ryan Oliver has performed and taught throughout the world. He honed his craft on Canada’s west coast before moving to Amsterdam, Toronto and then New York. Since returning to Toronto, Oliver has maintained a busy schedule as one of the city’s in demand saxophonists. His debut recording, Convergence, was selected by several CODA Magazine critics as one of the top 10 Canadian jazz releases of 2007. Oliver has received numerous Canada Council and Ontario Arts Council grants for touring and recording and has performed at most of the major jazz clubs and festivals throughout Canada. Oliver’s straight-ahead, tough toned tenor can be heard often in Toronto. He maintains a weekly Sunday night residency at Joe Mamas with Organic, a quartet that features Canadian great Bernie Senensky on Hammond B3 organ. Their debut recording, Organic, Live will be released in the winter of 2012. Oliver is also a member of the Cookers, a co-operative quintet that features original compositions based in the hard-bop language pioneered by Art Blakey and Horace Silver. The Cookers debut recording, Volume 1, was met with rave reviews, and led to a live radio and video broadcast for the CBC in 2011. Oliver has toured India, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and Canada with legendary Canadian saxophone group the Shuffle Demons and is also a featured sideman in Tonight at Noon, an octet that plays the music of Charles Mingus.

Oliver is also a member of Juno award winning blues/rock performer Derek Miller’s group. The band has traveled throughout North America, including performances at the New Orleans Jazz Festival, and Toronto’s Dundas Square. Oliver is featured in the horn section on Derek Miller’s most recent recording, “Derek Miller and Double Trouble”, featuring Stevie Ray Vaughn’s heralded rhythm section Double Trouble and musical icon Willie Nelson. The recording was nominated for a Juno in 2011.

Jazz education is also an important part of Oliver’s professional life. A saxophone instructor at York University’s jazz rogram, he has also been a featured clinician at Malaspina College, Western University, the University of Windsor and high schools throughout New York, New Jersey, Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario. Alongside all of his efforts as a musician and educator, Oliver is also the artistic director for the Harbord St. Jazz Festival, an annual festival that celebrates the pairing of fine dining and jazz.

“Oliver's improvisations have the formal character that defines many of his compositions. A muscular jazz improviser, Oliver always stays on point.” -CODA Magazine.

“Convergence shows how ready he is as both player and composer. He has a full-range horn, rich at the bottom and true at the top, acknowledging past masters like Trane and Dexter Gordon.” -Whole Note Magazine



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