Next Generation Jazz Festival

Ben Ball grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, and began playing drums at age thirteen. At the age of seventeen he enrolled in Humber College and completed the Applied Music program by the age of twenty. During his student sojourn, he became focused on jazz music and after graduating from Humber, received a Canada Council project grant to study with Chris McCann in Kingston, Ontario. After touring and playing at various jazz clubs around Toronto, Ben received another project grant from the Canada Council and decided to move to New York to pursue his interest in jazz music.

During his two-year stay in New York, Ben played at the 55 Bar, Sonny’s Place and many more venues. He worked with such musicians as Billy Mitchell, Kermit Driscoll, Joe Knight, Ken Hatfield, Carol Sudhalter and many others. During this time he got a call to play in South Korea. After playing for three years in Korea, Ben decided to study further and enrolled in the University of Toronto jazz bachelor's program. He graduated in 2001 and then proceeded to study and get his bachelor of education from O.I.S.E. at the University of Toronto.

Upon completing his studies at the University of Toronto, Ben accepted a full-time contract-based teaching position in the Applied Music Department of PaekChe Institute of the Arts in South Korea. While in Korea, Ben worked with many visiting musicians including Kirk Macdonald, Lorne Lofsky, John Patitucci, Brian Dickinson, Ted Quinlan, Mike Downes, Jae Chung, Kenji Omae and many others.

He maintains an active international touring schedule and has played at many international jazz festivals including The New York J.V.C. Jazz Festival, Montreal International Jazz Festival, The MooJu International Jazz Festival, Toronto Downtown Jazz Festival, and many more. He has released three recordings as a leader: Words Within (2005), Type None (2011), and 401 Towards London (2015). Ben completed his master's of music (Jazz Performance) at McGill University in 2007 and taught jazz drums at Humber College until 2020. Since that time he has been active playing in Korea, Japan, Canada and the U.S. and is excited to announce the uppoming release of his forth recording, Chronicle. This new jazz recording was inspired by eight visual works and is performed by the Ben Ball Quartet.

Ben Bishop is a guitarist whose energetic bop-based style draws inspiration from the jazz greats of the 1950s and 60s. He co-leads the organ trio Donnybrook and has collaborated widely with Canadian jazz artists such as Pat LaBarbera, Bernie Senensky, and Cory Weeds. His career has also taken him abroad, with highlights including a concert with saxophone legend Lee Konitz and a residency at Italy’s Umbria Jazz Festival with Ryan Truesdell’s Gil Evans Project. Ben earned his Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) in Jazz Studies from the Eastman School of Music.

Thomas Francis is one of Toronto’s leading pianists and is well known for his extensive background in jazz and soul-based musics. Thomas played with Canadian artists such as Juno Award-winning music icon and jazz vocalist Kellylee Evans, Alexis Baro (Juno-nominated jazz artist), Dan Talevski (MMVA nominee), Melanie Durrant (Juno-nominated R&B artist), KC Roberts & The Live Revolution (Toronto funk band), The Reklaws (CCMA-winning country duo), George St. Kitts (Juno-nominated Toronto soul icon), and many more. 

Thomas completed his diploma in Jazz Performance at Humber College, and bachelor of fine arts at York University. In 2017, he completed his master's in Composition at York where his work focused on the relationship between jazz and hip-hop histories and musics and a new breadth course he created, “Hip Hop: A Study of Blackness.” His works received grants such as the 2019 Special Projects grant by the Toronto Jazz Festival and the 2021 Music Recording Project – EP Category grant from Ontario Arts Council. Additionally, he is well known for his musicianship skills in writing and arranging for strings, having established his own contemporary string ensemble, The Four Strings.  

Thomas is the host of The Jazz Gene, a weekly one-hour show on Toronto’s online jazz radio platform, Jazzcast.ca. Thomas has spent the last five years working as a professor of music at Centennial College and is looking forward to joining Humber’s music program as a full-time faculty member this year.

JUNO-nominated artist Tara Kannangara is a second-generation Sri Lankan-Canadian force of nature, giving you music that is deeply personal, genre-bending and culture blending. All this encompassed by wild trumpet melodies, searing guitar lines, lush synths, and piercing lyricism that will make you turn your head and listen. Originally from Chilliwack, B.C., Tara eventually ended up at the University of Toronto studying music. After years of studying institutionalized art, Tara was compelled to break the veneer built around her experience of music-making. She began to write about being a dreamer, an outsider, and a woman longing to be seen. Tara has been featured in the Toronto Star, Dominionated, Earmilk and has been heard on CBC's The Signal, Sirius XM, The Sunday Edition and NPR Tiny Desk with Lido Pimienta. She also performed on Lido's Grammy-nominated record Miss Colombia. She has had the privilege to work with extraordinary homegrown artists such as two-time Polaris winner Jeremy Dutcher, Charlotte Cornfield, and Witch Prophet. Her own work has been presented at major festivals across North America.

Born and raised in Ottawa, saxophonist Dave Neill moved to Toronto in 1995 to pursue a jazz performance degree from the University of Toronto, where he studied with Alex Dean and Mike Murley.

Working as a performer, adjudicator and clinician, Dave is active on the freelance scene, including jobs with Johnny Mathis, Wayne Newton, Frankie Valli, Regis Philbin and Nikki Yanofsky. He has adjudicated at festivals across Ontario, including the national Musicfest finals, and has given a clinic at OMEA entitled “Breaking Down Barriers for Jazz Improvisation.”

Now a full-time professor at Humber Polytechnic, Dave teaches a variety of courses, including Business for Creative Industry and Song Materials, as well as private lessons in the woodwind area. Previously, he taught at the University of Toronto from 2004-2016 and the Humber Polytechnic Community Music School from 2000-2015, as well as mentoring the next generation of performers at the Youth Jazz Canada’s Summer Jazz Workshop and the IMC Jazz Camp.

Dave completed his master’s in jazz performance at the University of Toronto, and has released two CDs as a leader. His debut quartet CD, All In, featured his original compositions, while his follow-up CD, Daylight, was named as one of the top Canadian Jazz CDs of 2014 by Peter Hum of the Ottawa Citizen.

MMus (Jazz Performance) - University of Toronto
BMus (Jazz Studies) - Thompson Rivers University
Diploma (Honours Music) - Humber Polytechnic

Brian is very active in the Canadian music scene, having performed and recorded with groups including the Rob McConnell Tentet, The Boss Brass, John MacLeod’s Rex Hotel Jazz Orchestra (Juno Award 2010), Hilario Duran’s Latin Jazz Big Band (Juno Award 2006), the Bernie Senensky Quintet and the Barry Elmes Quintet. He has also backed up a lengthy list of international artists including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Paul Anka, Diana Krall, and has appeared on dozens of radio/television jingles as well as theatre productions.
Brian has also performed with a variety of classical ensembles including the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, National Arts Centre Orchestra, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, and True North Brass. He has performed at jazz festivals around the world, most recently as a featured artist in Daejeon, South Korea. It was an honour for him to perform as an artist/clinician at the 33rd Annual International Trumpet Guild Conference held in Banff, Alberta.

Brian loves working with young musicians and has been a guest performer/clinician at numerous colleges and universities nationwide. He is an Endorsing Artist for the Edwards Brass Instrument Company (Elkhorn, WI) as well as the Gard Instrument Bags (Kolkata, India).

Originally from Sudbury Ontario, Christian Overton is now one of the most in demand trombonists and composers in Toronto in every scene from jazz and rock to salsa, R&B, theatre work and everything in between. He has a degree from Humber Polytechnic where he studied with some of the nation’s top jazz musicians including Pat LaBarbera, John MacLeod, and Alistair Kay. Christian has also completed a master's degree at the University of Toronto studying with Kelsley Grant, Gary Kulesha and Tim Ries. 

As a musician, writer, journalist and arts educator, Andrew Scott, PhD, has influenced many aspects of creative arts and culture in Canada and beyond for more than three decades.

A jazz guitarist, Andrew has worked as an in-demand side person, led his own bands with a focus on classic jazz repertoire, and performed and recorded with such musicians as Bernie Senensky, Dan Block, Harry Allen, Grant Stewart, Ben Paterson, Randy Sandke, and Jon-Erik Kellso for such labels as Cellar Live, Marshmallow, and Sackville Records.

His latest album, Horizon Song with Kelsley Grant, Amanda Tosoff, Neil Swainson, and Order of Canada winner Terry Clarke was released on Cellar Live records in 2024.

Andrew has committed himself to learning from the elders of this music and has enjoyed meaningful musical relationships with the late drummer Archie Alleyne—for whom he worked as side musician, music director of Alleyne’s Evolution of Jazz Ensemble, and co-composer of “Syncopation: Life in the Key of Black”—and the nonagenarian pianist Gene DiNovi, with whom Andrew has recorded three albums.

Andrew’s music has been heard internationally in film and television (Pretend We’re Kissing, Once a Thief, CBC’s The Border and Kim’s Convenience), and his writing about music has appeared in Downbeat Magazine, Wax Poetics, CODA (where he was the final managing editor), Jazz Research Journal, Journal of Popular Music Studies, and in more than one hundred sets of jazz liner notes.

In 2024, Andrew was the principal researcher, essayist, and associate producer of an archival release of a 1972 recording from the famed American jazz organist Jack McDuff.

Andrew has also worked as an independent juror and consultant for the Toronto Arts Foundation.

Andrew's comedic writing regularly appears on such humour platforms as The Haven, The Daily Drunk, MuddyUm, and The Toronto Harold where it garners between multiple hundreds and more than 11K online views, and his poetry has been anthologized by Alien Buddha Press (Alien Buddha Zine #58 and the chapbook Resist the Zeitgeist).

Having earned his PhD from York University, Andrew has lectured at universities and conferences across North America (NYU, Kent State, McGill, York University, Western University, the University of Guelph) and has enjoyed a long professional relationship with Humber Polytechnic, where he is a professor and the program co-ordinator of the Bachelor of Music program.

Andrew was previously associate dean and acting dean of Humber’s School of Creative and Performing Arts, where he oversaw and administratively stewarded the music, creative writing, arts administration, theatre and comedy programs.