Jack Rosenzweig is a 23-year-old drummer, composer and bandleader residing in Sydney, Australia.

Now in his fourth year of Jazz Performance at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Jack performs frequently in many different musical configurations across Sydney. Jack writes music with Ebony Tait and Lachlan Mills as “HEAPS GRASS”, exploring the spaces between structure and improvisation. His other original band Motion Quartet, who recently attended the 2023 Siena International Summer Workshop in Italy, are quickly establishing themselves as a fresh new voice in the Sydney jazz and improvised music scene.

Under the tutelage of jazz luminaries such as Will Vinson, Steve Barry and Simon Barker, Jack has developed a unique sound and approach to the drumset free from the boundaries of genre. Jack has received numerous awards and scholarships, including the JazzSA Mike Stewart Memorial Prize (2017), Australian Art Orchestra Mentorship (2020) and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music Henderson Travellers Scholarship (2023).

Jack Rosenzweig was generously supported by the Banff Centre Artists' Awards and the Sylvia Stone Scholarship.
 

Perhaps a product of nominative determinism, Oscar Peterson is a musician & composer redefining musical boundaries. He works as a double bassist, electric bassist, guitarist, drummer, composer, arranger & musical director in Sydney & across Australia. 

Oscar graduated from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music jazz program in 2019. In July 2023, he attended the Siena Summer Jazz Workshop in Siena, Italy, studying with Linda Oh, Matt Penman, Reinier Baas, Gerald Clayton & Shai Maestro. In 2022, he was selected as a member of the Australian National Jazz Orchestra Youth Big Band, performing at the Sydney Conservatorium International Jazz Festival and the Perth International Jazz Festival. In 2017, Oscar attended the Australian Art Orchestra's Creative Music Intensive in Tasmania, studying traditional Korean music and Indigenous Australian music. Other career highlights include touring internationally with ARIA-nominated Zela Margossian Quintet and performing for Herbie Hancock at the Sydney Opera House for International Jazz Day in 2019. 

Recently, Oscar has been performing and touring with the Michael J Brady Trio and indie-rock band Safety First, and is currently working on a debut album project with his own quartet.

Oscar Peterson was generously supported by the Repsol Emerging Artists Award.

John Buck (he\him) is a musician and improviser in Montréal. He has been an active percussionist and improviser on the Canadian jazz scene for the past decade with the Plastic Waste Band, the Claire Devlin Quartet, and the Roman Munoz Quartet. Since 2021, John has worked extensively in the contemporary dance community as an accompanist and composer of electronic music for Concordia University, l’École de Danse Contemporaine de Montréal, Regroupement Québécois de la Danse and l’École de Danse Contemporaine de Québec. His solo project, John Lost, launched in summer 2023.

John Buck (il) est un musicien et improvisateur de Montréal (Québec). Il œuvre en qualité de percussionniste depuis une dizaine d’année dans la scène jazz canadienne avec Plastic Waste Band, Claire Devlin Quartet et Roman Munoz Quartet. Depuis 2021, John collabore avec le milieu de la danse contemporaine en tant qu’accompagnateur et compositeur de musique électronique pour l’Université Concordia, l’École de danse contemporaine de Montréal, le Regroupement Québécois de la Danse et l’École de Danse Contemporaine de Québec. Son projet solo, John Lost, sera lancé à l’été 2023.

John Buck was generously supported by the Banff Centre Artists' Awards.

Claire Devlin is a saxophonist and composer based in Montreal. She released her debut album “Anyone” in 2020 and currently co-leads two collectives based in Montreal: the Plastic Waste Band and Bellbird. Claire performs regularly with various ensembles including the Canadian National Jazz Orchestra, the Orchestre national de jazz de Montréal, Rommel Ribeiro, Thus Owls, Christine Jensen’s “Equal=Orchestra”, Warren Spicer’s “Unessential Oils”, and Tommy Crane’s “Dance Music For All Occasions”.

Claire grew up in Ottawa, Canada and started playing saxophone at the age of 12. In 2012, she was the recipient of the Rising Young Star award at the Prince Edward County Jazz Festival. Soon after, she moved to Montreal to study music at McGill University. Claire attended the Banff Jazz & Creative Music Workshop in 2017 where she met and studied with several renowned musicians including Vijay Iyer, Linda Oh, Tyshawn Sorey, Jen Shyu, and Stephan Crump. In 2020, Claire received a master’s degree in jazz performance and composition at McGill University. In recent years, Claire has performed alongside musicians such as John Hollenbeck, Christine Jensen, Linda Oh, Jean-Michel Pilc, Okkyung Lee, P.J. Perry, Anna Webber, and Matt Mitchell.

Claire Devlin was generously supported by the Banff Centre Artists' Awards.
 

Originally from Saint-Maurice, QC, David Lemyre discovered his passion for music at a young age and started playing guitar at the age of 13. His musical roots in blues, country, and rock genres have shaped his guitar-oriented sound, which he integrates into jazz and pop contexts.

David pursued jazz studies at Cégep de Trois-Rivières and Université de Montréal. Now based in Montreal, David is deeply involved in multiple musical projects. He is a member of bands Pourpre, Plastic Waste Band, Will Régnier Quartet, Les Hilares and artists Amonte Noble and Segöya. In addition to his band roles, David works as a substitute guitarist and freelancer, contributing his musical expertise to various projects.

David Lemyre was generously supported by the Banff Centre Artists' Awards.

Olivia W-B is a composer, improviser, guitarist, and vocalist based out of Boston, MA.  Their work spans from their self-taught background in experimental rock and noise scenes to more recent studies in composition, playing with the tension between the  underground versus the formal, the personal versus the political, and pleasure versus pain. Current projects include noise-punk band Rong, ensemble Premium Velvet Headache Pillow, chamber groups, solo guitar, and several yet-to-be-named new bands.

In April 2024 they were awarded a Mass Cultural Council Grant for Creative Individuals which will fund a suite of chamber compositions to be recorded this coming winter. They were recently commissioned to be the inaugural composer for Subject to Change: New Works for Violin Duo, a project of the Magari Ensemble, and their piece Ghost Weight was premiered at San Francisco Conservatory in February 2024. This summer their band Rong will be touring across the Midwest and Atlantic Coast, and this fall they plan to release several full-length albums through independent labels including people | places | records and Erased! Tapes. Since fall 2023 they have been studying audio engineering by assisting at New Alliance Audio in Somerville, MA.

Olivia Becker was generously supported by the Banff Centre Artists' Awards and the Robert L. Jamison Endowment.

Kevin LaFleur is a guitarist, pianist and composer based in Montreal. Interested in the ways that landforms and their organisms can guide music composition and improvisation, his practice depends on ways of observation and experimentation which are at home in natural spaces. After training as a composer and guitarist in the faculty of jazz and improvised music at McGill university, he has developed an expansive sound, gathered from his work in live electronics, free improvisation, contemporary dance, and Appalachian folk music.

Kevin is deeply interested in how art forms in and out of music can inform each other, and has a long standing project on connecting short fiction and composition. Equally at home in Jazz, folk, and pop contexts, he has worked extensively in the Montreal music scene, and maintains an ambitious schedule as a composer-performer. His first record of original music is in the works.

Kevin LaFleur was generously supported by the Banff Centre Artists' Awards and the Liz Crockford Artists Fund.

Multi-instrumentalist Kelvin Mansaray is a unique emerging voice in contemporary music. Born and raised in Nova Scotia with roots in Transylvania and Sierra Leone, Kelvin began his musical journey in community groups like the Nova Scotia Youth Orchestra and Jerry Granelli’s Creative Music Workshop. He has developed a compositional practice through self-directed study and collaboration with an intergenerational group of artists in the field of American music. Since relocating to Toronto, he has been performing and recording original music. Kelvin’s depth of practice on the violin and research into a variety of musical traditions make him a passionate and engaging performer, collaborator, and educator.

Kelvin Mansaray was generously supported by the Cyril and Elizabeth Challice Fund for Musicians.

Pianist Andrew Zhao made his concert debut at the age of 11 performing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1 with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ken-David Masur. His solo appearances across the United States and Europe, in repertoire ranging from Bach to Saariaho, include performances at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Los Angeles, Carnegie Hall in New York City, Harris Concert Hall at the Aspen Music Festival, and the Borromeo Music Festival in Switzerland. As a chamber musician, Andrew is a founding member of the London-based Trio Thalassa, which won the Royal Academy of Music’s Historical Women Composers Prize for their performance of Rebecca Clarke’s Piano Trio.

Andrew is currently a masters student at the Royal Academy of Music, where he studies with Rustem Hayroudinoff. He graduated with a B.A. in music and public policy analysis from Pomona College in southern California, where he studied with Genevieve Feiwen Lee. In his hometown of San Diego, California, Andrew studied with Inessa Litvin, and is grateful to Mrs. Litvin for establishing his musical foundations and love for piano playing. He has participated in masterclasses with Robert McDonald, Dang Thai Son, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet.

Jonathan Kawchuk is a Canadian composer and sound artist, notably having scored Before the Ice (2024) and episodes of David Suzuki's The Nature of Things. His work spans theatre, film, and sound installations and he has worked on albums for Nico Muhly and Ben Frost, and studied field recording under Chris Watson. An alumnus of several music residencies, he is a Grammy voting member, recording artist on Paper Bag Records, and the Canadian representative for acoustic conservation non-profit Quiet Parks International.

Kawchuk’s most recent record Everywhen was created by playing back vocal recordings deep in the Canadian Rockies, allowing them to reverberate, and then re-recording the result in multichannel surround sound after they had gathered the forest’s characteristic echo. His next album will explore the paleoecology of Alberta/BC using instruments built from living fossil wood species, extended vocal techniques, and concatenative synthesis.

Jonathan Kawchuk was generously supported by the Alice and Betty Schultz Scholarships Endowment Fund for Dance and Music.