Results for "Canadian pianist"

Francois Bourassa

François Bourassa—now with eleven albums of original music under his belt—has become an ambassador for Canada’s thriving jazz community at an international level. A paragon of both consistency and evolution, he continues to seek out new challenges for himself, his colleagues, and his growing community of listeners. On July 7, 2023, he released « Swirl », a new live album by the François Bourassa Quartet recorded in 2022 at Studio Piccolo in Montreal (QC), and on April 16, 2021, Bourassa finally released his first solo piano album L’Impact du silence, recorded at La Buissonne in the southeast of France.
Bourassa’s talent was initially recognized by the Festival international de jazz de Montréal in 1985, kickstarting his trio’s recording and performing career throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. In 1996, Bourassa’s trio joined forces with André Leroux, a saxophonist and flutist who is equally at home with a contemporary saxophone quartet as with a jazz orchestra as the featured soloist. Bourassa’s eponymous quartet has been a staple of Montreal’s artistic landscape for 30 years and celebrates this anniversary with a Canadian tour in June/July 2026 and a European tour in November 2026. The band features founding bassist Guy Boisvert, longtime saxophonist André Leroux, and Guillaume Pilote as the most recent addition in Bourassa’s mentorship of young drummers. Their 2001 Live album recorded at Toronto’s Top O’ the Senator received a Juno award. In celebration of his compositional output, Bourassa was also the recipient of SOCAN’s Hagood Hardy Award in 2011. Number 9 (2017) chronicles his discography while also providing a subtle namecheck to the Beatles’ psychedelic oeuvre “Revolution #9” and The White Album. One highlight of the album, “Carla und Karlheinz” salutes two more of Bourassa’s guiding influences: Carla Bley (to whom he paid tribute at the Festival international de jazz de Montréal with the Orchestre national de Jazz) and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Number 9 was heralded as one of the best Canadian jazz albums of 2017 (Peter Hum, Ottawa Citizen) and praised by Bley herself and Steve Swallow as a “wondrous piece of work.” Over the past decades, the quartet has garnered multiple Félix and Opus awards for their recordings and live performances, respectively.