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Tania Gill

Acclaimed composer and pianist Tania Gill is a key figure in the Toronto scenes of jazz and creative music. She’s performed and recorded with many diverse world-class artists, including Deep Dark United, Charles Spearin’s The Happiness Project, Andrew Downing, The Flying Bulgars, Mary Margaret O’Hara and Anthony Braxton. Her long-awaited 2010 debut recording, Bolger Station (Barnyard Records) was ‘disc of the week’ and short-listed for ‘disc of the year’ by The Globe and Mail, and was nominated for ‘debut album of the year’ in The Village Voice jazz critics’ poll. Her Quartet includes top-flight collaborators, Jean Martin (drums), Clinton Ryder (bass) and Lina Allemano (trumpet). The music features free-spirited improvisation and compositions that are by turns playful, fiery and serene. The Tania Gill Quartet is a consummate contemporary jazz group that plays with intelligence, passion and grace.

"Pianist/composer Tania Gill understands the understated power of lyricism... There's evidence of Gill having drunk deeply at the double well of the Bleys (composer Carla and pianist Paul): in motifs, harmonic concepts, pianism and pauses...." Exclaim Magazine “If you met Tania Gill's Bolger Station at a party, you'd quickly decide to hang out with it for the rest of the evening. It's different, after all. A little eccentric, unpredictable. In the best way.” CKUA “Gill's spiky, sparse piano was most successful in channelling the eccentric spirit of the masterful Monk” Toronto Star

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5
Album Review

Ilios Steryannis: Babylonia Suite

Read "Babylonia Suite" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


Canadian drummer Ilios Steryannis traces his family roots back 2,500 years to ancient Babylonia. With his Babylonia Suite, he explores the family tree and his maternal grandparents' diasporic journey from Baghdad to Mumbai to Manchester and finally to Canada with a world music selection of sunshine bright music, with eleven life-affirming compositions. The instruments include piano, bansuri flute, violin, tabla, oud and saxophone. The result is a sort of Middle Eastern, Indo-jazz fusion that shifts into the direction of “Blue ...

1
Album Review

Tania Gill Quartet: Disappearing Curiosities

Read "Disappearing Curiosities" reviewed by Troy Dostert


Pianist Tania Gill has been making inspired music in the ever-thriving Toronto jazz scene since the early 2000s, although her output has become especially visible since her debut release Bolger Station (Barnyard Records, 2010). An artist equally attentive to melody and songcraft, Gill refuses to be pigeonholed, contributing to a range of projects which defy easy labeling; she appeared on vocalist Rebecca Hennessey's All the Little Things You Do (self-released, 2020), an album both jazz-inflected and pop-friendly, and on saxophonist ...

4
Album Review

The Brodie West Quintet: Meadow Of Dreams

Read "Meadow Of Dreams" reviewed by Chris May


It may or may not be because of a recent series of programmes about Impressionist art on British television, combined with a passing knowledge of intoxicants, but for some reason the album title Meadow Of Dreams suggests one of Claude Monet's paintings of a field of poppies. As it happens, Monet's poppy paintings are a good fit for Toronto-based alto saxophonist Brodie West's sophomore album with his acoustic quintet. The music is beautiful, sunny, uncorrupted—and a million ...

29
Album Review

Mark Segger: Lift Off

Read "Lift Off" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


This Canadian band throws almost everything imaginable at the studio walls in synchronous fashion. And while the album may be classified as an EP, due to its 29-minute length, quality is the underlying factor throughout. Based out of Edmonton, Segger started this band via its first album, The Beginning (18th Note Records, 2011). Nine-years later, the sextet extends its resume with this high-impact and compelling release, brimming with gobs of counterpoint, sizzling free-form detours and complex modal narratives.

5
Album Review

Mark Segger Sextet: Lift Off

Read "Lift Off" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky


Fracas and focus are not mutually exclusive concepts. In purely linguistic terms, invoking the label “avant-garde" when addressing sound often calls to mind a melee-as-music scenario. The audible truth, however, is something else entirely. An artist's work can lean far to the left without falling off the comprehensibility scale, and drummer Mark Segger makes that argument with brevity and brio. With twelve years of existence binding concepts and compadres, Segger's sextet operates like a well-oiled, though highly irregular ...

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Album Review

Tania Gill: Bolger Station

Read "Bolger Station" reviewed by Mark Corroto


a recording that sounds uncomplicated and effortless might actually be a more difficult task than presenting an impenetrable maze of writing and arrangements. Pianist/composer Tania Gill does just that with Bolger Station, an unadorned minor classic that gets stuck in the heart, while tugging at the soul. Gill's music has an uncluttered yet sometimes quirky style, one that can echo Thelonious Monk, as heard on “Magpie," a fitful angular romp that she shares with the expressive trumpeter Lina ...

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Ron Davis
vocals

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Babylonia Suite

Self Produced
2023

buy

Meadow Of Dreams

Ansible Editions
2022

buy

Disappearing...

Self Produced
2022

buy

Lift Off

Self Produced
2020

buy

Parallel Lights

Woods And Waters
2014

buy

Zakir

From: Babylonia Suite
By Tania Gill

Dig Up The Stories

From: All The Little Things You Do
By Tania Gill

Lift Off

From: Lift Off
By Tania Gill

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