Award-winning, Toronto-based trumpeter, vocalist and composer, Rebecca Hennessy will lead this quartet featuring: guitarist Don Scott (Peripheral Vision), bassist Michael Herring (Peripheral Vision, Way North), and drummer Tim Shia (Worst Pop Band Ever). This show will feature music from Rebecca’s recent album, All The Little Things You Do, as well as some newer songs not yet released.

Rebecca Hennessy – trumpet and voice

Rebecca Hennessy is an award-winning Canadian trumpeter, vocalist, composer and bandleader based in Toronto. In 2018, Rebecca won the Toronto Arts Foundation Rising Jazz Artist Award. In 2016, her FOG Brass Band was nominated for both the Montreal Jazz Festival’s Grand Prix de Jazz and the Galaxie Rising Star Award at the Halifax Jazz Festival. In 2017, Rebecca was commissioned by Silence in Guelph to compose new music to a selection of acclaimed author, Thomas King’s (CBC’s Dead Dog Cafe, The Back of the Turtle, Inconvenient Indian) new poems. In 2019, she wrote a big band arrangement of one of these commissioned pieces, “Dig Up The Stories”, for the = Jazz Orchestra & Christine Jensen at the Ottawa Jazz Festival, presented at the National Arts Centre. “Dig Up The Stories” can also be heard on All The Little Things You Do. 

Rebecca’s most recent studio album, All The Little Things You Do heralds her debut as a singer-songwriter and was released in the profound time between the recent death of her mother and the birth of her first child. This beautifully written, performed and produced album speaks to the experiences of love, grief and mental health with a new voice, emerging from a deep and diverse musical career. Her band on the album features world-acclaimed and celebrated musical voices including guitarist Kevin Breit, pianist Tania Gill, bassist Michael Herring, and drummer Dave Clark. Extra musical guests on the album include The Upper York Mandolin Orchestra, Thomas King, Tom Richards, Drew Jurecka, Claire Doyle, and Alex Samaras.

Don Scott – guitar

Don Scott is a Toronto-based guitarist and composer, and a well known force in Canada’s creative music scene.  He brings an unshakable energy and originality to his own music, and is sought after by many musicians as the “x-factor” in other projects. His melodic inventiveness, rhythmic fluidity, and passion for delving into sound and texture are essential to the many projects he leads or co-leads, including Peripheral Vision, God’s Gift To Yoda, Don Scott Trio, Run Stop Run, The Offbeat, and Idioteque, which showcases Don’s vocal skills, performing the music of Radiohead. In demand as a versatile sideman, Don has performed with international jazz legends, David Binney, Chris Potter, Jim Black, Dave Douglas, and Ernest Ranglin, and a “who’s who” of Canadian jazz players. In 2008-2009, Don split his time between New York and Toronto, and while there, studied with Adam Rogers, Ben Monder, and Donny McCaslin. In 2013, Don spent several months living in Berlin, studying with renowned composer, John Hollenbeck. Don’s piece, “Backbone” won the Galaxie Rising Star Award for best composition presented at the 2012 Montreal Jazz Festival.

Michael Herring – double bass

Michael Herring is a double-bassist and composer based in Toronto who writes, performs and records across genre lines, equally comfortable in jazz as in roots settings, including folk, world, and pop/rock. Herring leads and co-leads a number of groups which focus on original music of which he is a major contributor. Herring’s compositions and bass playing can also be heard in the collectives Way North (New York/Toronto collaboration with Petr Cancura, Rebecca Hennessy and Richie Barshay), God’s Gift to Yoda (experimental indie jazz-rock), who released their debut full-length album This Album Is Not For People, and in Harrington and The Uplifters (Roots Nerd-Rock and New Orleans pop), where you can hear Herring’s lead and backing vocals and lyrics. Herring has toured around recorded in North America, Europe, and Korea with his ensembles as well as sharing the stage with such great musicians as: David Binney, Bucky Pizzarelli, Bernie Senensky, Ab Baars (ICP/Amsterdam), Ken Vandermark, Jah Youssouf (Mali, Africa), Mansa Sissoko (Mali, Africa), David Braid, Kirk MacDonald, Dave Clark, P.J. Perry, Tannis Slimmon, Harry Manx, Lina Allemano, William Carn, Percy Sledge, Ernest Ranglin, and Brinsely Forde (Aswad). Herring’s compositions and arrangements have been featured in the repertoires of many ensembles, including he wrote the soundtrack to the short film In Harms’s Way.

Tim Shia – drums

Whether it be a jazz festival gig with Rich Underhill; winning a Trille Or with Amelie et Les Singes Bleus; playing Cumbia’s with Quique Escamilla on CBC; adding percussion on a Electronica recording with Milosh (Rhye); to headlining a Hip Hop festival in Taiwan with LEO37, Tim Shia has been fortunate enough to play with a host of Juno and Grammy Award winning musicians in an array of genres. When he’s not performing, Tim has scored and licensed music for film and television including work for CBC, the Toronto Public Library, Teletoon and the NFB. He has given masterclasses and workshops on performance and improvisation at every level from Elementary to Post Secondary Institutions across Canada. He also hosted a radio show on Jazz Fm 91.1 called “Jazz is What?!”

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