Past Artist Bios

John Nugent

John is a native Newfoundlander jazz saxophonist turned international booking agent, followed by artist manager, jazz record label owner, and currently producer.

His skills as a musician landed him a stint playing in the Woody Herman Band, which then led to him booking the band’s Canadian tour.

John has served as artist manager for renowned jazz trumpeter Randy Brecker. In this capacity he negotiated the recording contract for Mr. Brecker’s recording entitled 34th and Lex, which went on to sell 86 000 copies in the USA - a very high level of sales for a jazz recording.

He is founder and president of New York based production company NYJam, and is currently the Producer/Artistic Director of both the Rochester and Stockholm Jazz Festivals.

Steve Amirault

Steve Amirault is one of Canada’s most innovative and unique voices as both pianist and composer. He has been awarded several grants from both the Canada Council and the Conseil des Art et des Lettres du Quebec, won the Montreal International Jazz Festival Competition, and received a Juno for his collaboration with saxophonist Francois Carrier.

Some performance highlights would include several recordings of original material on Canada’s premier jazz radio shows, CBC’s Jazz Beat, Silence on jazz, and Club de minuit. Over the years Steve has performed countless concerts at the Montreal International Jazz Festival, the Ottawa International Jazz Festival and the Halifax Jazz Festival.

For more information please visit Steve Amirault's Website.

Tena Palmer

Canadian singer, Tena Palmer is an improviser, composer and experimental musician presently living in Ottawa, Canada.
Her musical training includes a B.Mus. in jazz performance (voice), from St. Francis Xavier University, N.S., Canada, where she also earned a diploma in jazz performance on baritone saxophone & flute.

Tena is best known in Canada for her work with the Celtic Jazz quartet, Chelsea Bridge. As a member of the quartet, Chelsea Bridge, she recorded and toured extensively, playing New York City’s Blue Note, toured in Scandinavia and the U.S. as well as frequent national touring. Each of the group’s three CDs, were on the top 10 lists of national jazz critics for their respective release years. At the Festival International de Jazz de Montreal, the group won le Prix du Maurier for Best Canadian Band in 1993; the same year Palmer won le Prix SOCAN for Best Canadian Composition. In 1996, the group was also chosen Best Vocal Jazz Group by Jazz Report magazine.

For more information please visit Tena Palmer's Website

Bill Frisell
"Bill Frisell is the Clark Kent of the electric guitar. Soft-spoken and self-effacing in conversation, he apparently breathes in lungfuls of raw fire when he straps on his (guitar)...His music is not what is typically called jazz, though it turns on improvisation; it's not rock'n roll; and it sure ain't that tired dinosaur called fusion. In one of the biggest leaps of imagination since the Yardbirds and Jimi Hendrix, Frisell coaxes and slams his hovering split-toned ax into shapes of things to come...But besides being a guitar genius, he's turned into a terrific songwriter. Like Monk, Frisell's harmonic and melodic ideas form a succinct, seamless mesh with outer sonic and rhythmic ideas about his ax."
~ Spin

Bill Frisell will accompanied in the St. John’s Jazz Festival by Jenny Scheinman on violin, Greg Leisz on pedal and lap steel guitars, and Danny Barnes on banjo.

Jean Beaudet Trio
Jean Beaudet studied the piano at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. He then played in various blues, rock and calypso groups. His professional jazz career began in the early seventies. Many of Canada’s most eminent jazz critics have called Jean Beaudet one of the country’s finest virtuoso pianists. Zack Louber (acoustic bass) graduated from McGill University in June 2000 with a Bachelor of Music majoring in Jazz Performance with high distinction in Jazz Bass. Since graduation, Zach has performed at numerous international jazz festivals…as both leader and a sideman. Martin Auguste (drums) is an original member of the Papasoff Trio, has been part of most of Papasoff’s projects over the years and currently works with Jay Atwill and Coral Egan.

Jerry Granelli Sandhills Reunion
Like rocker Bruce Springsten with his Nebraska or author Annie Proux with her two volumes of Wyoming stories, Jerry Granelli's Sandhill Reunion—where his band accompanies Rinde Eckert's words—evokes the American experience in the prairie heartland, placing poetic viginettes of small experience under a powerful microscope on a set of of jazz-backed prose poems that explore Billy the Kid, a bygone strip joint, a kiss blown at a wedding from the violinist to a small boy in a "Little White Suit," and roughneck workers constructing a bridge over a "River of Glass," dangling "like a grey spider" on the end of a taunt rope to inspect the rivets and bolts.

The music, composed variously by members of the band, swells with swirling reeds—clarinet, bass clarinet, bari sax, cello/bass/guitar, and Granelli's drums. It blows moody and cool around Eckert's words like a prairie fog; or chugs into a reedy bump and grind on "Just Angels," a tale that takes us into a bygone "Godforsaken den of inequity."

Sandhill Reunion is unlike anything I've heard, but the mood it draws—going back more than thirty years—is the same as that of Bob Dylan's John Wesley Harding or the Band's The Band: odd, folksy, sometimes surreal tales, very American in nature, told with a simple eloquence entwined with superb yet understated musicianship. An odd, poignant masterpiece.

~ Dan McClenaghan (allaboutjazz.com)

Papa Mambo
Winnipeg’s Papa Mambo has been delivering the musical goods ( Latin and Afro-Cuban jazz) since the late ‘80’s. Papa – Rodrigo Munoz – is the driving force behind this combo, one of Winnipeg’s most popular musical ensembles. Even a sojourn of a few years in his native Chile did little to dispel the band’s “papa” – larity. Papa Mambo had left its mark on the Winnipeg scene. So when Rodrigo and Carol Hutchinson returned in 2001, there was great anticipation that some great musical things were about to happen. The core of Papa Mambo was still there: Rodrigo on percussion, Carol had never stopped singing, Dave Lawton had become the man to call for a trumpet gig, Ken Gold’s saxophone was omnipresent in Winnipeg and Gilles Fournier had become bassist numero uno. Jeff Presslaff brought his impressive US jazz background to the group, while the percussive section was filled out with some newer names like Scott Senior Daniel Roy, Victor Lopez and William Bonness. The ingredients were there for the perfect five-star Afro-Cuban, Latin-Jazz feast.

Queen Mab
Formed in the mid-90’s, Canadian piano and clarinet duo Queen Mab has won rave reviews for their blending of composed and improvised music, and jazz and classical music. Queen Mab consists of Toronto pianist Marilyn Lerner – who has led a couple of albums on her own…and Lori Freedman, an award-winning clarinetist from Winnipeg who has made guest appearances with a number of Canadian orchestras, and performed on over 15 recordings including her own solo release, Huskless. Queen Mab’s first recording, Barbie’s Other Shoe came out in 1997 on multi-instrumentalist Vinny Golia’s 9 Winds label. It was followed a few years later by Close, released on another independent West Coast avant-garde music label, Spool. Queen Mab has toured and performed at major festivals across Canada, from Newfoundland’s Sound Symposium to the Vancouver Jazz Festival.

The V16 Project
Judging by its grille and supercharged front end, Jerry Granelli’s new thing is built to cruise. The V16 Project, a power quartet nominally under the drummer’s leadership, has the potential to go any which direction. That it does, in it’s own peculiar way, relentlessly shifting among styles and mixing them up to the point where you can’t tell them apart. Everyone pitches into the composition, as would be expected given the looseness of this configuration. The V16 Project, like a lot of refreshing improvisation these days, takes a roots-punk orientation toward the music. Jazz purists, or purists of any kind, you better skip this one.

Trio Derome Guilbeault Tanguay
The trio is formed of Jean Derome on saxophones and flutes, Normand Guilbeault on doublebass and Pierre Tanguay on drums. These three musicians enjoy a strong reputation on the Montreal music scene and even though they are mostly known as new music and jazz musicians, they are often spotted accompanying our best singers-songwriters, poets, filmakers, choreographers, etc. A growing, faithful audience follows the Trio everywhere it performs and the concerts attract an impressive number of young jazz musicians. In spite of their straight-up beat, rockish bass touches and moments of clear melody, this trio plays anything but NPR jazz. Their approach is hard-hitting and well-versed in the sort of rebellious, free-thinking spirit that infects all types of jazz.

Luluk Purwanto & the Helsdingen Trio
The Stage Bus with Luluk Purwanto & the Helsdingen trio are an internationally recognized jazz ensemble, dedicated to bringing their music to audiences around the world and
continually breaking new ground for the acceptance and appreciation of improvised music.
Their Canadian tour will feature Dutch jazz pianist Rene van Helsdingen ,violinist Luluk Purwanto, regarded as one of Indonesia’s foremost jazz artists, the New York based bass player, Essiet Okon Essiet, who is highly acclaimed among international jazz musicians and the drummer Marcello Pellitteri, Associate Professor at Berklee, College of Music in Boston.

Mary Barry
"Mary is a bilingual artist who has thrilled audiences across Canada, the US and France, moving easily from jazz to blues to chanson. Her music has been described as a gold mine of nuggets for collectors of original jazz and blues." John Holmes, The Evening Telegram

Mary's performances include the International Women's Music Festival in Paris, the Debut Plus Concert Series at Memorial University, and the St. John's, Montreal and Vancouver Jazz Festivals. A recipient of five songwriting awards, including the CBC Atlantic Song Contest, Mary's critically acclaimed CD These Days was nominated for the 2005 ECMA Jazz Recording of the Year . She was recently awarded the prestigious 2004 Female Artist of the Year Award at the Newfoundland & Labrador Music Industry Awards ceremony in St. John's.

The Janet Cull Band
The Janet Cull Band is one of St. John's most unique musical entities. With it's music blending elements of jazz, blues, R&B, and rock, the Janet Cull Band presents a powerful live show that encompasses every inch of the musical spectrum. The band has just released it's first full-length album.