LAILA BIALI LAILA BIALI
July 27, 2024
ABOUT LAILA BIALI
Multi award-winning Canadian singersongwriter, pianist and CBC Music national radio host Laila Biali has headlined festivals and venues spanning five continents from New York City’s Carnegie Hall to Beijing’s National Centre for the Performing Arts, and supported international icon Sting. Her 2020 album release, Out of Dust, received rave reviews and was nominated for a 2021 JUNO Award. Laila was also honoured by SOCAN Music with the Hagood Hardy Award for Excellence in Songwriting. In 2019, Laila’s eponymous release won her a JUNO Award (Canada’s GRAMMY) for “Vocal Jazz Album of the Year.” The year prior, she was awarded top prize at the Canadian Songwriting Competition in the Jazz category.
Laila was also the youngest-ever double winner at Canada’s National Jazz Awards when she was named “SOCAN Composer of the Year” and “Keyboardist of the Year.” She received her first JUNO nomination for Tracing Light (2011), and a spot on DownBeat Magazine’s “Best Albums of the Year” for both Live in Concert (2013) and Out of Dust (2020).
In September of 2017, Laila was brought on as the host for CBC Music’s national radio show, Saturday Night Jazz, a weekly show broadcast to millions of listeners across Canada. While Laila continues to earn high honours in the jazz world, her signature sound transcends genre as she “masterfully mixes jazz and pop, bringing virtuosity and unpredictability to songs that are concise and catchy” (Washington Post). Her latest release – Your Requests – showcases personal arrangements of jazz classics requested by her social media community and features guest vocalists Kurt Elling, Emilie-Claire Barlow, and Caity Gyorgy as well as instrumentalists Anat Cohen, Grégoire Maret, Kelly Jefferson, Michael Davidson, George Koller, Larnell Lewis, Ben Wittman and Maninho Costa.
ABOUT THE BAND
Jodi Proznick is a Canadian jazz bassist, composer, educator and producer. In 2019, she was named Jazz Artist of the Year at the Western Canadian Music Awards and has been nominated for three Juno Awards. She was also a recipient of the British Columbia Lieutenant Governor’s Arts and Music Awards in 2022. Jodi Proznick has earned a reputation as one of Canada’s finest jazz artists. She has won numerous National Jazz Awards, including Bassist of the Year in ’08 and ’09. Her group, the Jodi Proznick Quartet, was awarded the Acoustic Group of the Year and Album of the Year in ‘08 and the Galaxie Rising Star at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival in ‘04. In addition to leading her own group, Jodi has performed with many of Canada’s top jazz musicians, including PJ Perry, Don Thompson, Kirk MacDonald, Guido Basso, Oliver Gannon, Dee Daniels, Phil Dwyer, and Laila Biali. She is regularly in demand to perform and record with visiting jazz artists including Michael Bublé, Byron Stripling, Michael Feinstein, David “Fathead” Newman, Bucky Pizzarelli, Ed Thigpen, Jeff Hamilton, Peter Bernstein, Charles McPherson, Seamus Blake, George Coleman, Sheila Jordan, Mark Murphy, Harold Mabern, Eric Alexander, Jim Rotundi, Eddie Daniels, Jeff Hamilton and Lewis Nash.
Toronto-based percussionist, composer, and producer Ben Wittman was raised in the creative atmosphere of Bennington, Vermont. In 1982, Ben pursued a degree in Jazz performance at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. While there, he immersed himself in the music of Africa, Cuba, and Brazil. 10 years later, Ben moved to New York City, where he fully integrated his love of world rhythms with songwriting and production. As a player, Ben has recorded and/or performed with a wide range of artists across all genres including Sting, Michael McDonald, Carvin Winans, Paul Simon, David Clayton Thomas, Paula Cole, Laurie Anderson, Erasure, Jonatha Brooke, Rosanne Cash, Laila Biali, Don Byron, Eileen Ivers, Natalie MacMaster, Solas, Yungchen Lhamo, and more. As a producer, Ben has also worked with a diversity of artists including Paula Cole, Lucy Kaplansky, Eileen Ivers, Peter Eldridge, MOSS, Patty Larkin, Laila Biali, Rose & the Nightingale, Anna Dagmar, Heather Bambrick and others.
THE PAPERBOYS | AUGUST 10
The Paperboys are a globe-touring sextet that, in a single set, can be counted on to stomp through Celtic reels, traditional Mexican folk, fiddle tunes, New Orleans brass band music, classic pop songcraft, bluegrass, and even a philosophical waltz or two, before bringing it all home with a Latino/West African singalong.
