Trombonist Ron Westray, Oscar Peterson Chair in Jazz Performance in 91ŃÇɫ’s Department of Music, returns to Toronto’s Massey Hall on Thursday, Feb. 23 for an innovative youth outreach program.

He will lead “Rhythm Counts”, an invitational workshop for young people, just before his former bandmates, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra led by Wynton Marsalis, take centre stage to perform the highly-anticipated .

Ron Westray

Called , the arts and education outreach program presented by the Corporation of Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall provides complimentary tickets for selected concerts to youth who might otherwise be unable to attend. The program, now in its 13th season, aims to enhance and broaden students’ musical horizons by exposing them to world-class performers and related pre-concert demo-workshops by noted local performers/educators.

Westray has invited 91ŃÇÉ« music grad and multiple Juno Award-winning jazz saxophonist Mike Murley to co-host the 30-minute workshop, to be held in Massey Hall’s intimate Century Lounge. The session is designed to demonstrate the language of jazz and the art of improvisation, to prepare the students for the mainstage performance. Together, Westray and Murley will present an informal mix of commentary, musical demonstrations and historical highlights, followed by a Q&A. Tickets for the workshop and concert have been distributed to more than 150 music students, ranging in age from 12 to 17, at selected schools and community groups in the Greater Toronto Area.

“I was thrilled to be invited to take part in Share the Music and connect with these young people,” said Westray. “I come from the performance world, and it’s always a pleasure to have the opportunity to play, plus the chance to talk about the music with a fresh audience.”

Westray in performance at the Lincoln Arts Center

“We’re delighted to have Professor Westray on board for this event,” said program coordinator Laraine Herzog. “He’s a perfect fit, seeing as he was lead trombonist with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra for so many years. His reputation as an incredible performer and educator precedes him – not to mention his connection with Oscar Peterson, a true Canadian musical hero, through his position at 91ŃÇÉ«.”

Prior to joining 91ŃÇÉ«, Westray toured internationally with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra for more than a decade, including a number of performances at Massey Hall.

“Wynton [Marsalis] deserves every honour for his immense accomplishments in building the JLCO, its reputation as one of the finest jazz ensembles in the world, and its remarkable touring reach,” said Westray. “I was in the audience when they played Massey Hall last year, and it was like seeing my family from the other side of the fourth wall. I’m looking forward to seeing these guys play once again, and to helping a new young audience develop a deeper connection to a band and a musical repertoire I feel so strongly about.”

As well as a performer, Westray is an accomplished composer and recording artist. His commissions for the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra include the monumental score Chivalrous Misdemeanors – Select Tales from Don Quixote (2005) and arrangements of the works of Charles Mingus and Ornette Coleman. He is well known for his collaborations with Wycliffe Gordon, and has also appeared in concert with such luminaries as Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Stevie Wonder, Benny Carter, Dewey Redman, Roy Haynes, Randy Brecker and a host of other pre-eminent artists. A regular on the New 91ŃÇÉ« City club circuit, he has played premier jazz venues such as the Village Vanguard, Blue Note, Sweet Basil’s, Iridium, Jazz Standard and Smalls, and is a standing member of the Mingus Band. In 2009, he joined 91ŃÇɫ’s music department, where he teaches in the jazz program and co-directs the 91ŃÇÉ« Jazz Orchestra.

Next month, Westray is participating as soloist and clinician at the prestigious Savannah Music Festival. On March 25, he appears as guest soloist with the 91ŃÇÉ« Wind Symphony, performing Rimsky-Korsakov’s Trombone Concerto under the baton of 91ŃÇÉ« music Professor William Thomas.

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Violinist Jacques Israelievitch and pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico, both professors in 91ŃÇɫ’s Department of Music, offer an evening of repertoire as diverse and inspiring as the Canadian landscape.

The program features a selection of complex but lyrical 20th-century works by established Canadian composers. It includes Oskar Morawetz’s Duo ( 1961), James Rolfe’s Drop (1998), Gary Kulesha’s ...and dark time flowed by her like a river... (1993) and André Prévost’s Improvisation (1976).

Left: Jacques Israelievitch

The concert culminates with Raymond Luedeke’s monumental Fancies and Interludes VI (1988). The quick changes of metering in the piano parts are “rhythmically challenging” for a performer, Petrowska Quilico notes, but the artists revel in the work’s “lovely tonal colours” and how they contrast with sections of exciting primal rhythms.

An internationally known violinist, Israelievitch served as concertmaster of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for two decades before joining the Music Department in 2008. He has appeared as chamber musician with such luminaries as Emanuel Ax, Yefim Bronfman and Yo-Yo Ma. He performs regularly with the Naumburg Award-winning New Arts Trio and in the Israelievitch Duo with his son, percussionist Michael Israelievitch. His extensive discography includes the Juno-nominated Suite Hebraique with pianist John Greer and the first complete recording of Kreutzer's 42 Etudes for solo violin. An avid performer of contemporary music, Israelievitch has had works by Canadian composers R. Murray Schafer and Jeffrey Ryan commissioned for him by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. The Toronto Musicians’ Association presented him with its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008 in recognition of his distinguished contribution to the performing arts in Canada.

Right: Christina Petrowska Quilico

One of Canada’s foremost pianists and a multiple Juno nominee, Petrowska Quilico has appeared in solo recitals, chamber settings and with orchestras on four continents. Widely recognized as an innovative and adventurous artist, she is a longtime champion of contemporary and Canadian music, and has premiered more than 100 works by leading North American and European composers. Eminent Canadian composers she has collaborated with over the course of her stellar career include Ann Southam, Violet Archer, Glenn Buhr, Christos Hatzis, Alexina Louie, Larysa Kuzmenko and John Weinzweig. She was awarded the 2007 Friends of Canadian Music Award through the Canadian Music Centre and Canadian League of Composers in recognition of her dedication to Canadian contemporary classical music and her “unwavering support for Canada’s composing community.” In late 2011 she released her 26th CD, Tapestries, a collection of Canadian concerti. She has taught piano performance and musicology at 91ŃÇÉ« since 1987.

Tickets are $15, or $5 for students and seniors. For tickets, contact the Box Office at 416-736-5888.

The Israelievitch/Petrowska Quilico duo is the third of four performances in the Faculty Concert Series spotlighting faculty artists in the Department of Music at 91ŃÇÉ«. The final concert on Tuesday, Feb. 14, will feature improv pianist Casey Sokol with guest artist, pianist and 91ŃÇÉ« alumnus Andrew Craig.

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And yet, most regular people don't know that the track even exists.

"If I went to my local grocery store here and stopped 20 people, if I found one who knew about it, I'd be shocked," said Grammy Award-winning 91ŃÇÉ« music Professor Rob Bowman [Faculty of Fine Arts], who's been lecturing about Rocket 88 since 1979. "It's definitely not as well known as Elvis's hits or Jerry Lee (Lewis)'s big hits, or Rock Around the Clock. This is (before) the massive explosion.... You don't hear it as a golden oldie. You listen to oldies radio, and you'll hear Hound Dog, you'll hear Great Balls of Fire, you'll hear Maybellene by Chuck Berry, you'll hear Little Richard's Tutti Frutti – you won't hear Rocket 88.”

Other elements of the song were different as well.

As Bowman explains it, the song's whole groove is underpinned by riffs, which were derived from the blues tradition and became a crucial element in rock music.

"(The song's) significance on white teenagers in '51 probably wasn't huge, but it was a huge record on the black charts," Bowman explained. "I mean, some white hipsters who were listening to black radio at the time did hear it, and I think it had a big influence on those musicians."

"Besides its significance historically, it's just an unbelievably great, exciting record," Bowman enthused. "This record's got distorted electric guitar, it's riff-based, it's got the honky tenor sax tradition encoded within it, it's got boogie-woogie piano, it's got lyrics that are a series of sexual automotive metaphors, and it's at a souped-up tempo.

"What's not to love?"

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile – 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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For the past 10 years, Cohen, a 91ŃÇÉ« lecturer and performer who specializes in Judeo-Spanish Sephardic songs, has been sorting and writing liner notes for Lomax’s Spanish recordings, made in 1952. Now she has received the first from the Library of Congress’s Kluge Center to prepare for publication his fieldwork diary of that year, a treasure trove of notes, photographs, local festival programs and other ephemera. Cohen believes the Spanish diary will be the first full diary of Lomax's to be published.

Right: Judith R. Cohen in 2009 in Riga, Latvia, where she gave a concert

Cohen travels to Spain to do her own fieldwork and research, and give concerts. While there, when she has time, she visits the villages Lomax recorded in. Half a century later, she has recorded and interviewed many of the same singers and musicians – or their children and grandchildren – Lomax did. This fellowship "is an opportunity to put all that work together," says Cohen.

was an American folklorist and ethnomusicologist who recorded thousands of folk songs and interviewed thousands of singers in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, Italy and Spain. In the 1950s, he was based in London where he edited the 18-volume Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music. He died in 2002, at the age of 86.

Until recently, Lomax's recordings, films, photographs, manuscripts and research have been housed in the Association for Cultural Equity in New 91ŃÇÉ« City, overseen by his daughter, anthropologist Anna Lomax Wood. When Cohen visited the centre around 2000 to research Lomax’s Spanish recordings, Lomax Wood invited her to edit his Spanish collection. The Lomax archive is now housed in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

As editor of Lomax’s Spanish recordings, Cohen has written detailed notes – often with colleagues in each region of Spain – for CD collections of his recordings of dance tunes and ballads from Spanish regions – Aragón and València, Basque Country, Extremadura, Galicia, Ibiza and Formentera, and Mallorca – during the Franco regime. The , which sometimes run to 40 and 50 pages, are available on the Association for Cultural Equity website.

Meanwhile, more CDs of Lomax's Spanish recordings, edited by Cohen, are in the works. One on Asturias is coming out this month. And she's finished most of the notes and translations for CDs on of his recordings in Murcia, Castilla-Leon, La Mancha, Andalusia and Cantabria.

Cohen grew up in Montreal and became interested in traditional music while hitchhiking through the Balkans, Spain and elsewhere in the early 1970s. The English grad returned home and promptly earned an undergraduate degree in music, a master’s degree in medieval studies (her thesis was on women musicians in Christian, Muslim and Jewish communities in medieval Spain), a doctorate in ethnomusicology (her dissertation explored Judeo-Spanish song in Sephardic communities in Toronto and Montreal), and a teaching degree. One of the first scholars to specialize in the traditional music of the Sephardic diaspora (Spanish Jews expelled from Spain in 1492), Cohen traces her own roots not to Spain, but to Ashkenazi Jews from Lithuania and Latvia.

In 1990, Cohen began teaching at 91ŃÇÉ«. She has taught music history, Renaissance and medieval ensembles, world music surveys and the world music chorus. She continues to carry out fieldwork in traditional music of Sephardic Jews around the Mediterranean and of Crypto-Jewish communities (Jews who resisted expulsion by hiding their religious identities) along the Portugal-Spain border.

Fluent in French, English, Spanish and Portuguese, and adept at several others, Cohen is also an accomplished musician who performs medieval music, as well as traditional Spanish, Portuguese, Sephardic, Balkan, Yiddish and French-Canadian songs. She sings with her daughter, flamenco singer and dancer Tamar Ilana Cohen Adams, and plays traditional hand percussion as well as the vielle (medieval fiddle), the oud (Middle Eastern lute) and recorders.

She has published many articles and book chapters, and recorded several CDs of Sephardic, medieval and related music. This summer, besides her work at the Library of Congress, she will be giving papers and concerts at conferences in Portugal, England, California, Newfoundland and Washington, DC.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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De Val is studying traditional Gaelic songs and aiming to foster an awareness of the language while also contributing to its preservation. A key part of this new project is research into prominent figures such as Frances Tolmie and Marjory Kennedy-Fraser, who collected hundreds of Gaelic songs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many of them dating back to a much earlier period.

To assist her research, de Val has been studying Scots Gaelic since 2006, wryly noting how its grammatical structure and distinctive spelling and pronunciation make it challenging to learn. The number of those who are fluent in Gaelic are beginning to dwindle, though schools such as Sabhal Mòr Ostaig in Skye and St. Anne’s Gaelic College in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, do much to promote the language and culture; de Val has studied at both.

The connection between Scotland and the Eastern Canadian provinces is of particular interest to de Val. These historical connections have also inspired a number of 91ŃÇɫ’s music students to learn more about Gaelic culture, song and dance. De Val hopes to build the Music Department’s Celtic program by integrating various artistic practices in both studies and studio settings.

Currently, de Val is planning a research trip to the archives in Scotland and Halifax that house artifacts related to Gaelic culture. She is particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of visiting Tolmie and Kennedy-Fraser’s archives at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh, where she will begin sifting through an extensive collection of field notes, film clips and other research-related artifacts.

Inspired by the work of contemporary Irish composer Michael McGlynn, de Val aims to combine research and practice in the Gaelic Song Project by including compositional and performance components. She will be using her creative skills to arrange selected songs for various combinations of harp and chorus. She also looks forward to working with her daughter Susanna McCleary, who plays the fiddle and sings in Gaelic, and singer Catherine-Ann MacPhee from Ottawa. Together they plan to make the music come alive.

Reprinted from the March 2011 issue of Fine Arts Research Newsletter, by Suzanne Jaeger, Fine Arts research officer, and Dan Vena, 91ŃÇÉ« theatre student

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The gala evening will take place Tuesday, March 22, starting with student performers at 6pm, followed by headlining acts from 7 to 10pm.

Right: Rita di Ghent

Jazz musician and composer , the Oscar Peterson Chair in Jazz Performance at 91ŃÇÉ« who was formerly with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, jazz singer (BFA Hons. ’83), a two-time Jazz Vocalist of the Year nominee for the National Jazz Awards, and   (BFA Spec. Hons. ’07), winner of CBC’s “Canada’s Next Top Crooner”, will take centre stage.

The Celtic Ensemble, directed by 91ŃÇÉ« Professor Sherry Johnson of the Faculty of Fine Arts and two-time Canadian Open Group Step Dancing Champion, and 91ŃÇÉ« music Professor Casey Sokol, winner of the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations Award for Excellence in Teaching, will also perform.

Left: Ori Dagan. Photo by John Bregar Photography.

In addition, the 91ŃÇÉ« Gospel Choir and Winters A Capella Choir WIBI, among many others will showcase their talent.

The fundraiser is for the Winters College Dining Hall, which has been a cornerstone of the college community for more than 40 years. “It is one of only two remaining grand rooms out of the original seven constructed during the 1960s,” says Marie Rickard, college master of Winters College.

Right: Ron Westray

Over time, and with campus expansion, each of the others were in turn deemed obsolete and turned into classrooms, labs and offices. “These historic sites, widely used by students and faculty alike as educational and social spaces, served the college community for decades – our goal is to ensure the continuation of the Winters Dining Hall for many years to come,” says Rickard.

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The CD launch and recital will take place at 7:30pm, March 17, at the Glenn Gould Studio, CBC Building, 250 Front St. W. in Toronto.

Petrowska Quilico will perform recently revised work by the late composer Ann Southam (1937-2010). Glass Houses Revisited is being released by the on its Centrediscs label. The Liszt Anniversary Collection, on the Welspringe label, includes well-known pieces, operatic paraphrases and later works for the Liszt bicentennial. Both CDs were recorded at the Glenn Gould Studio and produced by David Jaeger.

Right: Christina Petrowska Quilico

Southam had revised the 15 pieces of the cycle for Petrowska Quilico, who then chose nine, which she edited and revised. “The score is made up of patterns, numbers and melodies, and I had to make sure they came out right. They are fiendishly difficult, especially at the tempo. You need to count each pattern. Each hand plays a different pattern with a different meter. Ann wrote how she wanted them to end, but I had to work things out to ensure the correct number of repetitions,” says Petrowska Quilico.

Fiendishly difficult "etudes" is how she describes the nine selections that she and the composer chose from Southam’s 1981 Glass Houses. She compares the cycle of fast pieces to the lightning-speed fingering of Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes and the complexity of Bach’s counterpoint, while containing “no indications of dynamics, phrasing, fingering, pedalling, or other directions in the score.”

Southam was a leading composer of minimalist music and a trailblazer amongst Canadian women composers. Glass Houses Revisited marks ’s third CD title devoted entirely to Southam’s music. The earlier two – the 2005 three-CD set Rivers and two-CD set Pond Life (2009) – were critically well received. She has also recorded Glass Houses No. 5 on her earlier CDs Ings, as well as other works by Southam on Northern Sirens, Virtuoso Piano Music of Our Own Time and Mystic Streams.

As for the 2011 Juno nomination, Larysa Kuzmenko's Piano Concerto, written for and performed by Petrowska Quilico on her 3 Concerti CD, has been nominated in the category. Petrowska Quilico performed it with the Toronto Symphony with Jukka Pekka Saraste conducting. This is her second Juno nomination; her first was for a performance of Glenn Buhr's piano concerto with the Winnipeg Symphony conducted by Bramwell Tovey. The Juno Awards will be announced from March 21 to 27, when the week will culminate in the live broadcast on CTV.

Tickets for the CD launch and recital cost $25 for adults and $20 for students and seniors, and are available from the or by calling 416-872-4255.

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“For a choral composer, a premiere sung by a Cambridge Choir is like a dream,” says Martin, who has just returned from three weeks at the University of Cambridge immersed in the daily life as a Visiting Bye-Fellow. The 24-voice strong Selwyn College Chapel choir is comprised of male and female choral scholars and students, who performed the world premiere under the direction of Sarah MacDonald, the choir’s director of music.

Right: Stephanie Martin conducting

Martin had the Selwyn College Chapel Choir members in mind when she composed the new settings, as they perform a traditional version of evensong several times a week. “They are students, but functioning at a professional level. They rehearse and perform at least four days every week,” she says.

Monastic communities throughout the world still sing these prayer services called “offices” several times a day, but it is the service of evensong that has survived in common practice at Cambridge, and is now a big draw for tourists. Choirs like the famous King's College, Cambridge have been making recordings for decades. She calls the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis canticles “beautiful and inspired poetry” with the Magnificat being quite dramatic in places, and the Nunc Dimittis gentle and comforting.

Already, Martin has been contacted by choirs in Edmonton, Ottawa and Toronto, who would like to perform her settings when they go on tour in England, and that, says Martin, “is pretty exciting.”They will be able to sing a Canadian composition. “It’s one thing to create a piece that is performed once, but quite another thing to compose a piece that has legs and will be sung for years.” She hopes this premiere in England will interest other choirs in her music.

Left: Selwyn College Chapel at the University of Cambridge

“The difficulty for modern composers with thousands of years of Western music behind them is to strike a balance between honouring tradition and saying things in a new way, while keeping the performers in mind,” she says. The desire always for composers is to express their own voice.

A recipient of the Lilian Forsythe Award for excellence in church music and the Leslie Bell Prize for choral conducting, Martin has had plenty of opportunities to express herself while on sabbatical this past year. She’s launched a new CD – , won the Association of Anglican Musicians competition for new choral music and has been accepted as an associate composer into the Canadian Music Centre, which keeps a library of some 600 composers of which Martin will now be one.

What has been really close to her heart, however, is the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of young people with cancer. She was recently asked about having her Alleluia CD available as an online resource for young people coping with cancer in Northern Ontario, and, of course, she said yes. “I do this pretty self-indulgent thing. I just write music and perform. Sometimes I step back and wonder how I’m helping anyone,” she says. “So I think that this is just such an amazing thing. This is kind of special because it will actually help someone.”

As the director of music at the , she is also involved in fundraising for Christchurch Cathedral in New Zealand, which lost its tower in the recent earthquake. A doctor from the Christchurch area, sang with the Gallery Choir at the Church of Saint Mary Magdalene during the recording of Martin’s Alleluia CD. The choir won in their category of the CBC amateur choir competition in 2008.

In addition, she is getting ready to launch another CD, this one with in Toronto, a 90-voice oratorio choir, which Martin has conducted since 1996. After putting out a call for submissions to their Great Canadian Hymn Contest, the Pax Christi Chorale picked one winner out of 75 submissions. The judges felt there were at least 10 more hymns deserving of wider dissemination and decided to have the choir perform the hymns for a CD that will be part of a book containing all 11 new hymns.

As if that weren’t enough, Martin will conduct the opera La Serva Padrona in Calgary in May, head to England for the Three Choirs Festival and be back in time to starting teaching once again in September.

To listen to a preview of Martin's Alleluia CD, visit the website.

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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On Thursday and Friday, the renowned jazz musician will perform at the in downtown Toronto with the members of his critically acclaimed group, the Barry Elmes Quintet. The performance celebrates the group's 20th anniversary and marks the of their newest CD REDSHIFT

This is the group’s first new release in a decade. REDSHIFT features nine songs, including seven new compositions by Elmes, a Wayne Shorter composition plus an arrangement of a traditional hymn.

Right: Barry Elmes

The music is performed by the quintet’s regular members, a who’s who of the best jazz artists from Canada, including Elmes' colleagues from 91ŃÇÉ«'s Department of Music, faculty members Mike Murley on tenor saxophone and Kevin Turcotte on trumpet and flugelhorn, Reg Schwager on guitar, Steve Wallace on bass, Elmes on drums and special guest artists 91ŃÇÉ« faculty member Kelly Jefferson on flute and tenor saxophone, and Vanessa Rodrigues  on the Hammond organ.

The CD's title REDSHIFT harkens back to Elmes' love of reading and fascination with astronomy. "Composed in honour of the astronomer Edwin Hubble and his associates whose work in the early 1900s provided convincing evidence that there are galaxies other than our own and that the universe is indeed expanding," says Elmes. "Photographing the light of stars in distant galaxies Hubble measured the spectral shift toward the red end of the spectrum, or the 'redshift'. The bigger the redshift, the faster the galaxy is speeding away from us.

"Hubble's work also provided a practical demonstration of the relationship between time and distance in space and offered substantial evidence for the Big Bang Theory," says Elmes. "Or put another way, I still experience a sense of wonder when I look up at stars in the sky knowing that everything I see happened a long time ago."

Elmes has played and/or recorded with many renowned jazz artists including: Tommy Flanagan, Charlie Haden, Hank Crawford, Diana Krall, Joe Henderson, John Abercrombie, Oliver Jones, Phil Nimmons, Dizzy Gillespie and the Moe Koffman Quintet.

His discography includes four previous recordings by the Barry Elmes Quintet (two-time winner of Acoustic Jazz Group of the Year), and recordings by the contemporary jazz quartet Time Warp, which he co-founded and co-leads with 91ŃÇÉ« music Professor Al Henderson. His honours include five Jazz Report Awards, two of which are for Jazz Musician of the Year.

In 1992, Elmes represented Canada with Time Warp at the Venezuela International Jazz Festival and was featured with the Oliver Jones Trio on the Governor-General's Tour of China, Japan and Korea in 1994. In 1996 he performed in Brazil and toured South Africa with the Canadian Jazz Giants. He toured Chile in 2000 with the Barry Elmes Quintet, and celebrated the ensemble’s 10th anniversary with a cross-Canada tour in 2001. He presides over the independent jazz label, , and performs frequently at major festivals and jazz clubs.

The performances at the Rex begin at 9:30pm on Thursday and 9:45pm on Friday. There is a cover charge of $9 on Thursday and $10 on Friday.

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Joining Westray on stage will be Toronto jazz artists Chris Banks and John Maharaj on bass and Max Roach on drums, plus special guest, tenor saxophonist Michael Arthurs from the University of Texas, Austin, where Westray taught before joining 91ŃÇÉ«. The first half of the concert will feature works for solo trombone and for trio (trombone, bass, drums). In the second set, which includes a number of Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell tunes, Westray will make his performance debut on piano in works for trio and quartet, with Arthurs on sax.

Best known for his work as lead trombonist with the legendary Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra conducted by Wynton Marsalis, and his collaborations with Wycliffe Gordon, Westray has appeared in concert with such luminaries as Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Stevie Wonder, Benny Carter, Dewey Redman, Roy Haynes, Randy Brecker and a host of other leading artists. A regular on the New 91ŃÇÉ« City club circuit, he has played premier jazz venues such as the Village Vanguard, Blue Note, Sweet Basil’s, Iridium, Jazz Standard and Smalls, and is a standing member of the acclaimed Mingus Band.

Right: Ron Westray. Photograph by Dwayne Hills

In addition to his concerts and recordings with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Westray has recorded as a sideman on such major labels as Columbia, Sony Classical and RCA Novus. He performs as co-leader with trumpet player Thomas Heflin on the CD Live in Austin, released Jan.18, on Blue Canoe Records. His 2008 CD as leader, Medical Cures for the Chromatic Commands of the Inner City, garnered a No. 1 listening rating on Emusic.com.

As a composer, Westray’s personal catalogue includes dozens of original compositions and arrangements for big band and mixed ensembles. Among his numerous commissions for the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra are his monumental score, Chivalrous Misdemeanors – Select Tales from Don Quixote and arrangements of the works of Charles Mingus and Ornette Coleman. His charts were recently published by Walrus Music. His bibliography includes reviews and citations in Down Beat, Jazz Times, The New 91ŃÇÉ« Times and The New 91ŃÇÉ«er.

Westray joined the faculty in 91ŃÇɫ’s Department of Music in fall 2009 as the Oscar Peterson Chair in Jazz Performance. The Chair, commemorating Canadian jazz icon Oscar Peterson, was established with a $4-million endowment from the Government of Ontario, along with a $1-million endowment for Oscar Peterson Scholarships to support talented students from underprivileged backgrounds studying music at 91ŃÇÉ«.

Westray teaches performance, composition, history and theory in 91ŃÇɫ’s renowned jazz program, and co-directs the 91ŃÇÉ« Jazz Orchestra with Al Henderson.

This is the final performance in the 2010-2011 Faculty Concert Series, spotlighting faculty artists in 91ŃÇɫ’s Music Department. Tickets are $15, or $5 for students and seniors. For tickets, contact the Box Office at 416-736-5888.

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