Friday 11 September | 6pm | Royal City Mission
Tania Gill . piano
Rob Clutton . bass
Nick Fraser . drums
Brodie West . alto saxophone, clarinet
In this 2026 Guelph Jazz Festival concert, pianist Tania Gill will perform new and older compositions, alongside legendary Toronto players Brodie West , Rob Clutton, and Nick Fraser.
Gill is a fixture in Toronto’s jazz and experimental scenes and also pursues collaborations in a number of other styles. Her compositional outlook mines her fascinations with pensive lyricism and playful angularity. Of her last album Disappearing Curiosities, Nick Storring wrote “…autumnal vistas melt into fitful counterpoint; as frenzied density unravels to reveal space; and as oblong melodic invention dissolves into textural investigation”.
Gill, West, Clutton, and Fraser share a particular Toronto-based history bringing a depth of similarly informed language and practice, drawing from jazz, avant-garde, indie-rock, folk, blues, and 20th century classical music. Gill, West, and Fraser have been longtime bandmates in the Brodie West Quintet, and in the revered experimental rock group, Deep Dark United. Gill and Fraser are both members of the Titillators, who create odd, unique, sensitive, and fun music by way of whistling, synthesizers, and percussion objects. Gill and West have freely interpreted jazz standards together in the Chris Banks Trio, and Gill has periodically joined West’s Eucalyptus. Rob Clutton has been bassist for the last decade in the Tania Gill Quartet, together with trumpeter Lina Allemano and drummer Nico Dann. This is only a short list of projects in which these musicians have common experience.
Tania’s previous album Bolger Station (Barnyard Records) received numerous accolades including a nomination for ‘debut album of the year’ in The Village Voice jazz critics’ poll, and a spot on The Globe and Mail’s top 10 discs of the year (2010). Tania has also performed or recorded with celebrated musicians including Myk Freedman (in the bands Saint Dirt Elementary School and Heavy Metal Klezmer), Mats Gustaffson’s Fire Orchestra, The Weather Station, Susanna Hood, Steve Reich, and Anthony Braxton among many others. Last year Tania was nominated for the Ontario Arts Council Paul de Hueck and Norman Walford Career Achievement Award for Jazz Keyboard Artistry. Tania teaches music at both the University of Toronto and Humber Polytechnic. She is also a climate activist and president of the board of Music Declares Emergency Canada.
taniagill.ca
taniagill.bandcamp.com
instagram.com/taniajgill
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Rob Clutton is a bass player who works in the spaces between composition and improvisation, in collaboration with musicians, dancers, theatre, and performance artists. Rob composes for and performs with small groups including solo bass, The Rob Clutton Trio, Cluttertones, Sweet Session, and duo with Tony Malaby. As a creative bassist, Rob has dedicated himself to playing original music, and has toured extensively in Canada and internationally with long-term projects including Drumheller, The Nick Fraser Quartet, Lina Allemano’s Titanium Riot, Stranger Still, Steve Koven, John Millard, NOJO, and others. Rob has also performed with international musicians such as Ray Anderson, Michael Attias, Anthony Braxton, Don Byron, Tobias Delius, Charles Gayle, Ig Henneman, Ingrid Laubrock, Joe Lovano, Isabel Roessler, Roscoe Mitchell, Roswell Rudd, and Kenny Wheeler.
“Clutton composes pieces that begin with the improbable and sometimes approach the uncanny, strange states of musical mind in which the heterodox elements seem to tune calmly to a new standard.” — Stuart Broomer, Wholenote
Nick Fraser has been an active and engaging presence in the Toronto new jazz and improvised music community for over twenty years. He has performed with a veritable “who’s who” of Canadian jazz and improvised music and with such international artists as Tony Malaby, Kris Davis, William Parker, Roscoe Mitchell, Marilyn Crispell, Anthony Braxton, Donny McCaslin, and David Binney. A JUNO award winner, he was also awarded a 2017 Chalmers Arts Fellowship. Nick’s recorded works as a leader include Owls in Daylight (1997), Nick Fraser and Justin Haynes are faking it (2004), Towns and Villages (2013), Too Many Continents (2015), Starer (2016), Is Life Long? (2017), and Zoning (2019). For ten years, he co-led the group Drumheller, who released four critically acclaimed recordings. Other projects that occupy him regularly are Peripheral Vision, Eucalyptus, Titanium Riot, The Brodie West Quintet, Ugly Beauties (with Marilyn Lerner and Matt Brubeck), and the Lina Allemano Four.
“Fraser not so much plays the drums as hurls himself whole body and soul against skin and metal… truly talented.” — Bill Stunt, CBC Radio
Alto saxophonist Brodie West‘s fascination with sound has taken him from Alexandra Park to Addis Ababa. As a bandleader and collaborator, he is a key member of Toronto’s vibrant creative music scene. Leader of avant-calypso unit Eucalyptus as well as his eponymous quintet, West also regularly performs with the The Ryan Driver Sextet, the Lina Allemano 4, a duo called Ways, and an ongoing collaboration with Andrew Zukerman/ Fleshtone Aura. Brodie’s music has been released by some of Toronto’s most celebrated labels, including Healing Power, Pleasence, Blocks Recording Club, and Rat-Drifting. Originally hailing from Nanaimo, British Columbia, jazz studies at Humber College brought Brodie to Toronto. Emerging as a member of Zebradonk, Deep Dark United, and Drumheller, he was soon in demand as a featured guest, adding his spirit to recordings ranging from Broken Social Scene’s seminal You Forgot It in People to more recent appearances with Jennifer Castle, Snowblink, and Tasseomancy. Studies at the Amsterdam Music Conservatory with Misha Mengelberg lead to musical encounters with percussionist Han Bennink as well as The Ex, culminating in two tours to Ethiopia and the group’s collaborative recordings with Getatchew Mekuria.