Fall 2023 - Spring Comes Early
On October 27, 2023, Spring Comes Early, a new album of 8 original jazz tunes, will be released. Once again, John has teamed up with many of the same great musicans that were heard on Overheard On a Park Bench, plus some new additions to the band.
With only a couple of exceptions, the tunes on this record are born of John’s love of the jazz of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The music of Bill Evans, Ahmad Jamal, early Miles - these were the masters that were John’s formative introduction to the world of jazz music.
DOWNLOAD Spring Comes Early on Apple Music
Winter 2021 - Thoughts on COVID, and what it has meant for creativity….
John is using this unnerving time of the COVID pandemic as a period of reset, contemplation and rediscovery. With no one dictating what to compose, and no deadlines to hit, what then?
What indeed. Over the course of the past year, John has recorded eight new tracks at one of Toronto’s finest studios, Canterbury Music Co. with engineer Jeremy Darby. The result is Overheard On a Park Bench, a record firmly in the jazz domain that, in all respects, reflects John’s unique and true musical voice;
“This is no small matter; freelance and ‘work-for-hire’ creators in all disciplines risk losing their authentic artistic selves in the necessary pursuit of earning a living by realizing the vision of others. COVID, with all of the sacrifices it has necessitated, has provided many of us with the time to relocate that which led us to be composers and musicians in the first place – and to head straight there.
The joy of writing music for its own sake, with intrinsic worth as an honest espression of personal artistic vision, is just that – joyous.
The eight compositions on this new album are, in many ways, more important to me than much of what I have written in the service of others. I am grateful to be free to explore my own voice, relieved in this moment of the constant burden of pleasing others.”
DOWNLOAD Overheard On a Park Bench on iTunes
Music For The Screen
As a screen composer, John brings 35+ years of experience and a command of diverse styles to his work, with credits such as Joan of Arc (TV Miniseries, 1999), Once Upon a Hamster (timeless), Bookaboo (TV series, 2016), and a refreshed take on the Hockey Night in Canada theme created for Rogers Media in 2014.
John also works as an orchestrator, both domestically and in Hollywood, and teaches orchestration to music professionals, including at the Canadian Film Centre in Toronto, Canada, where he is a mentor to the Slaight Music Residency program.
As a recording artist and producer, John has created over 45 CDs for the Solitudes© and Avalon© series, garnering 7 Gold Records and 5 Juno nominations in the process, and establishing himself as an international recording artist with a devoted following. This in addition to his independant releases, Spring Comes Early (2023), Overheard On a Park Bench (2021) and Head in The Clouds (2009).
As a community builder, John leads Toronto Ravel Study which he established in 2013, and which gathers together music and media professionals to study great orchestral scores, just for the love of doing so. Toronto Ravel is currently meeting both in-person and on Zoom. Click here to be taken to the Toronto Ravel site for more information on upcoming events.
John is also active as a mix engineer, having mixed CD projects for the likes of David Bradstreet and Beverly Glenn- Copeland, as well as his own releases.
John is an active member of SOCAN, SCGC and AFM.
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