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Tara Davidson

Tara Davidson is an award-winning alto and soprano saxophonist from Toronto, Canada who has performed around the world at such prestigious venues as New York City’s Carnegie Hall, the acclaimed North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands, the JZ Jazz Club in Shanghai, China, and The Kennedy Center, in Washington, D.C.

Davidson is a ten-time JUNO Award-nominated artist. As a bandleader, Davidson has produced seven recordings since 2004 and performed on more than forty recordings as a side musician. Four of her seven recordings as a leader or co-leader (Carn Davidson 9) have been nominated by the JUNO Awards for “Album of the Year” in the “Traditional”, “Solo” and “Group” jazz categories. Her bands have been comprised of various configurations from duo to nonet and have included such personnel as Mike Murley (saxophone), William Carn (trombone), Laila Biali (piano), Kelly Jefferson (saxophone), Andrew Downing (bass and cello), David Braid (piano), and Ernesto Cervini (drums), among many others. Davidson has been associated with six additional JUNO nominations for her work as a side musician with Andrew Downing’s Otterville, Ernesto Cervini’s Turboprop (x2), the Mike Murley Septet, CBC Records’ “Jazz Legends Live” project, and Jens Lindemann’s Order of Canada Band (Yamaha Big Band member). In 2020, Davidson won a JUNO Award for Jazz Album of the Year: Group as a member of Ernesto Cervini’s Turboprop.

Some of Davidson’s other honours include being selected as the lead alto saxophonist for the European Broadcasting Union’s “European Youth Jazz Orchestra”, being selected as one of five finalists in the Mary Lou Williams “Women In Jazz” saxophone competition, and being selected as one of three finalists for the Toronto Arts Foundation’s “Emerging Jazz Artist Award” in 2015. In 2013, Davidson was awarded the Ontario Arts Council’s “Chalmers Professional Development Grant” to study with saxophone legend, Dick Oatts, in New York City.

Davidson also enjoys a diverse freelance career as a woodwind player (saxophone, clarinet, and flute). She has worked with musical theatre companies such as the Stratford Festival, the Musical Stage Company, and Drayton Entertainment, and with such symphonies as the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the National Ballet Orchestra, and the Kitchener Waterloo Symphony. Studio and performance opportunities have allowed Davidson to perform alongside such artists as Joel Frahm, Shirley Bassey, Oliver Jones, Tommy Banks, Wycliffe Gordon, Emilie-Claire Barlow, Phil Dwyer, Jim McNeely, Ingrid Jenson, Christine Jensen, Brad Turner, John Riley, and Gary Versace.

Davidson is an active educator. She is on faculty at the University of Toronto and York University. Davidson has been a guest faculty member for Ottawa’s Jazzworks Jazz Camp, the Interprovincial Music Camp (IMC Jazz Faculty), Saskatoon’s TD Jazz Intensive Workshop, and the Stanford Jazz Workshop.

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30
Album Review

The Nimmons Tribute: Volume 2--Generational

Read "Volume 2--Generational" reviewed by Jack Bowers


If you live in Canada and are not familiar with the name Phil Nimmons, you probably have not been paying close enough attention. Nimmons, who surpassed the century mark in June 2023, is often referred to as the “Dean of Canadian Jazz," and listing his many accomplishments and awards would require far more space than is ordinarily set aside for a complete review. Suffice to say that Nimmons has been active as a composer, arranger, performer and educator longer than ...

5
Album Review

The Nimmons Tribute: Volume 2 - Generational

Read "Volume 2  - Generational" reviewed by John Chacona


Anyone who listened to Canadian radio after the adoption of the so-called Canadian Content requirement in the '70s probably heard a lot of Phil Nimmons' music. To be sure, the clarinetist, composer and arranger had achieved some recognition south of the 49th parallel through his RCA recordings of the '50s but, by choosing to base his career in jny: Toronto, he became a living symbol of Canadian jazz. When the nation celebrated the 100th anniversary of Confederation in 1967, Nimmons ...

3
Album Review

Nicky Schrire: Nowhere Girl

Read "Nowhere Girl" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky


The search for identity is a sine qua non of any artist's experience and development. But for a musician like Nicky Schrire, it goes much deeper than most. Born in London, raised in South Africa, studying and entering the professional ranks in New York and working back through her initial points of origin before relocating to Toronto in 2020, this noted vocalist-composer has established herself as a globetrotter of the first order. Stylistically, as with geography, Schrire hits multiple points ...

36
Album Review

The Composers Collective Big Band: The Toronto Project

Read "The Toronto Project" reviewed by Jack Bowers


The term Composers Collective is quite often a thinly veiled phrase that signifies “experimental" or “avant-garde" jazz. Thankfully, that is far from true on the Composers Collective Big Band's irrepressible The Toronto Project, which carries the listener on a buoyant and colorful musical journey through Canada's largest city, capital of the province of Ontario and home to a number of superb jazz musicians. True, there are some moments when the Collective veers from conservative to exploratory, but ...

29
Album Review

Carn Davidson 9: The History of Us

Read "The History of Us" reviewed by Jack Bowers


From north of the U.S. border comes The History of Us, a warm-hearted album by the Carn Davidson 9, a Toronto-based nonet co-led by trombonist William Carn and saxophonist Tara Davidson. The album consists of a pair of three-part suites, one by Carn, the other by Davidson, separated by Carn's amiable composition, “Goodbye Old Friend," a fond salute to his late and dearly loved cat, Murphy. Carn's “Finding Home" suite, which leads things off, was inspired by ...

15
Album Review

The Nimmons Tribute: Volume 1 - To The Nth

Read "Volume 1 - To The Nth" reviewed by Edward Blanco


The Nimmons Tribute is a small Canadian ensemble dedicated to honoring the living legacy of Phil Nimmons a clarinetist, composer and band leader who, in 2020, was 97-years-old and acknowledged as having done more than anyone else in bringing jazz to the mainstream of Canadian culture. A living legend, active for more than six decades, this “Dean of Canadian jazz" is a multiple JUNO Award-winning artist and recipient of the Order of Canada (O.C.) and Order of Ontario (O. Ont.), ...

16
Album Review

The Nimmons Tribute: Volume 1 - To The Nth

Read "Volume 1 - To The Nth" reviewed by Jack Bowers


The big news in Canadian jazz circles in 2019 was that musician and educator Phil Nimmons had retired—at age ninety-six. His decision marked the end of several eras that began more than seventy years ago and included forty-six years as a music teacher at the University of Toronto, ten acclaimed recordings as leader of his own groups, numerous honors as an educator and musician, a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005 from the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of ...

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

A Canadian Songbook

TBR Records
2025

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Magpie

TPR Records
2024

buy

Nowhere Girl

Anzic Records
2023

buy

The Toronto Project

Self Produced
2023

buy

Volume 2 -...

Self Produced
2023

buy

Volume 2--Generational

Self Produced
2023

buy

Skeletons

From: A Canadian Songbook
By Tara Davidson

Arf

From: Volume 2 - Generational
By Tara Davidson

West Toronto Ode

From: The Toronto Project
By Tara Davidson

Traveler

From: Nowhere Girl
By Tara Davidson

Love Is For The Birds

From: Nowhere Girl
By Tara Davidson

My Shining Hour

From: Abundance
By Tara Davidson

Granada Bus

From: Rev
By Tara Davidson

The Windup

From: Turboprop
By Tara Davidson

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