2023 Artists and Adjudicators

2023 Artists and Adjudicators:

Tara Davidson - ​Featured Artist
​David Restivo - Jazz Band Adjudicator
Joel Gray - ​Jazz Band Adjudicator
Pat Belliveau - Jazz Band Adjudicator
Jaclyn Guillou - Vocal Adjudicator
Kinga Hemming - Vocal Adjudicator
Bernie Addington - Combo Adjudicator
Larry Roy - Combo Adjudicator
Joe Auty - Combo Adjudicator

Our 2023 Featured Artist: Tara Davidson

Tara Davidson is an award-winning alto and soprano saxophonist who has performed around the world at  such prestigious venues as New York City’s Carnegie Hall, the acclaimed North Sea Jazz Festival in the  Netherlands, the International Jazz Festival in Lima, Peru, the JZ Jazz Club in Shanghai, China, and The  Kennedy Center, in Washington, D.C. 

Davidson is a ten-time JUNO Award-nominated artist. As a bandleader, Davidson has produced seven recordings since 2004 and performed on approximately forty recordings as a side musician. Four of her  seven recordings as a leader or co-leader (Carn Davidson 9) have been nominated by the JUNO Awards for  “Album of the Year” in the “Traditional”, “Solo” and “Group” jazz categories. Her bands have been  comprised of various configurations from duo to nonet and have included such personnel as Mike Murley  (saxophone), William Carn (trombone), Laila Biali (piano), Kelly Jefferson (saxophone), Andrew Downing  (bass and cello), David Braid (piano), and Ernesto Cervini (drums), among many others. Davidson has been  associated with six additional JUNO nominations for her work as a side musician with Andrew Downing’s  Otterville, Ernesto Cervini’s Turboprop (x2), the Mike Murley Septet, CBC Records’ “Jazz Legends Live”  project, and Jens Lindemann’s Order of Canada Band (Yamaha Big Band member). In 2020, Davidson won  a JUNO Award for Jazz Album of the Year: Group as a member of Ernesto Cervini’s Turboprop. 

Some of Davidson’s other honours include being selected as the lead alto saxophonist for the Canadian  National Jazz Orchestra in 2022 and for the European Broadcasting Union’s “European Youth Jazz  Orchestra” in 2008, being selected as one of five finalists in the Mary Lou Williams “Women in Jazz”  saxophone competition in 2008, and being selected as one of three finalists for the Toronto Arts  Foundation’s “Emerging Jazz Artist Award” in 2015. In 2013, Davidson was awarded the Ontario Arts  Council’s “Chalmers Professional Development Grant” to study with saxophone legend, Dick Oatts, in New  York City. 
Davidson also enjoys a diverse freelance career as a woodwind player (saxophones, clarinet, and flute).  She has worked with musical theatre companies such as the Stratford Festival, the Musical Stage  Company (formally Acting Upstage), and Drayton Entertainment, and with such symphonies as the  Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the National Ballet Orchestra, and the Kitchener Waterloo Symphony.  Studio and performance opportunities have allowed Davidson to perform alongside such artists as Joel  Frahm, Shirley Bassey, Oliver Jones, Tommy Banks, Wycliffe Gordon, Emilie-Claire Barlow, Phil Dwyer, Jim  McNeely, Ingrid Jenson, Christine Jensen, Brad Turner, John Riley, and Gary Versace. 

Davidson is an active educator. She is on faculty at the University of Toronto and York University.  Davidson has been a guest faculty member for the National Music Camp (NMC Jazz Faculty), Ottawa’s  Jazzworks Jazz Camp, the Interprovincial Music Camp (IMC Jazz Faculty), Saskatoon’s TD Jazz Intensive  Workshop, and the Stanford Jazz Workshop. 
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Tara Davidson is proud to be a Yamaha Artist and plays their Custom Z alto saxophone, Custom CSVR  clarinet, and YFL-577 Series flute.

Jazz Band Adjudicator: David Restivo

David Restivo is an award-winning pianist and composer. Born in Lansing, Michigan, molded by the mountains and coasts of New England, and based primarily in Toronto, Canada since 1982, he has been a sought-after and influential figure in Canada’s jazz community since the late 1980s. He recently relocated to Nelson, BC after accepting an offer to join the fulltime music faculty at Selkirk College.

Well-known for his work with Rob McConnell and the Boss Brass, the Mike Murley Quintet, and legendary songwriter Marc Jordan, David has performed and recorded with such renowned artists as Dave Holland, Curtis Fuller, Mel Tormé, Kenny Wheeler, Jon Hendricks, and David Clayton-Thomas. A dedicated music educator for over 20 years, he has previously taught at Humber College, the Banff Centre for the Arts, and the University of Toronto. His own teachers have included Muhal Richard Abrams, Jim McNeely, and Kenny Werner.

Immersed in the arts from birth, a chance discovery of a Dizzy Gillespie recording at an early age led him to eventually focus on jazz and improvised music, though he derives inspiration from a wide range of musical and non-musical sources, including John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Joni Mitchell, Genesis, Hazrat Inayat Khan, Gustav Mahler, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Marc Chagall, and J.S. Bach.

“...simply one of the most exceptional jazz pianists of his generation that Canada can boast of...” (Roger Levesque, Edmonton Journal) 
Jazz Band Adjudicator: Joel Gray
Jazz Band Adjudicator - Pat Belliveau
Vocal Adjudicator - Jaclyn Guillou
Vocal Adjudicator - Rejean Marois

Vocal Adjudicator - Kinga Hemming

Jazz and pop chanteuse Kinga was born in Poland, then moved with her family to Amsterdam before settling in Ottawa, Ontario. While being baptized at four months of age, she screamed out, and the attending priest predicted that Kinga would become a singer. Her parents gifted Kinga with appreciation for music, including and especially jazz, at an early age: Her father played in a jazz cabaret while her mother constantly played vocal pop and jazz records by The Platters, Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra and the like.
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By age thirteen, Kinga had studied classical piano and voice theory, and began immersing herself classical and contemporary music, both jazz and pop. She soon began performing at recitals and competitions, and helped assemble and lead a jazz quartet (called West Berlin) that played in and around Ottawa until all its members graduated from high school. She also discovered and began learning the repertoires of many great jazz vocalists, including Diana Krall, Dianne Reeves, Sarah Vaughan, Natalie Cole, and especially Ella Fitzgerald. Kinga moved on to Humber College, studying voice and theory under Trish Colter, Lisa Martinelli, and Lisa Sullivan; she also served as instructor for voice, piano, theory, ear training and improvisation to child and adult students. “The most important experiences during my time at Humber College were working alongside very talented and reputable musicians, learning different aspects of the jazz world, and lastly, winning the Duke Ellington Honoree award in my final year there,” Kinga recalls.
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Kinga has subsequently spread her vocal talents – as smooth, heady and sophisticated as a well-matured brandy – throughout Canada:  She has sung the American and Canadian national anthems for the Toronto Blue Jays, Toronto Maple Leafs (in partial French, for a sold-out contest against the Montreal Canadians), the Toronto Raptors, and internationally-broadcast Hockey Night in Canada. Kinga has performed with pianist Renee Rosnes, flugelhornist Guido Basso, and Don Thompson’s jazz ensemble, and appeared at the National Jazz Awards, the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada’s Walk of Fame, and on CTV and CBC Radio.
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Recently recorded, third released jazz album, and making it's  first round of GRAMMY nominations, "Forever in my Heart" produced by Gabriel Mark Hasselbach is a record that Heming describes as a "book written about her personal life". The tracks on this record were either introduced to me at an early age by my parents, or songs that reflect on my life now. I chose the ones that I felt really connected to because, to be honest, when I sing a song, it’s not just singing a song. It’s not just reciting the lyrics to make it sound pretty. It’s me telling a story. And every single song on the record is me telling a story,”
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“Forever in My Heart” is an acoustic jazz vocal album. Heming’s elegant and graceful voice is embellished by Miles Black’s dramatic piano melodies and supple bass-lines, Joel Fountain’s genteel drumming and Hasselbach’s astute trumpet expositions. On “Nature Boy,” Heming’s exquisite voice rides the rhythmic groove etched by guitarist Loni Moger and upright bassist Bernie Addington with evocative shadowing emoted from Hasselbach’s muted trumpet. ​

“At the end of the day, I know for myself, and from my own perspective, that I recorded this (album) from the bottom of my heart. That’s why I came up with ‘Forever in My Heart’; because every single part of that story is held forever in my heart.”

Combo Adjudicator - Bernie Addington

Combo Adjudicator - Larry Roy

Combo Adjudicator - Joe Auty