"Brad Turner's phenomenal talents as a trumpeter, pianist, drummer and composer make him one of Canada's most in-demand and highly esteemed musicians. Brad has performed and/or recorded with such artists as Joe Lovano, Kenny Wheeler, John Scofield, Michael Moore, Reneé Rosnes, Jimmy Greene, Terell Stafford, Ingrid Jensen, Mike Murley, Seamus Blake, Kenny Werner and Ernie Watts. Brad's groups have opened for McCoy Tyner, Roy Haynes, Wayne Shorter, Clark Terry, Diana Krall, Ahmad Jamal and Tony Bennett.

As a leader, Brad has released six albums, five as a trumpeter with his quartet, the most recent being the 2007 release Small Wonder, which was nominated for a Juno in the Traditional Jazz Album category.

What Is, released in 2005, won Best Jazz Album, at the 2006 Western Canadian Music Awards. As a pianist with his trio, the 2004 release, Question the Answer was nominated for a 2005 Canadian Urban Music Award, and a 2006 Canadian Indie Music Award.

In 1997 and 1998 Brad won Juno Awards (Canadian Grammy) for Best Contemporary Jazz Album recognizing his work in the internationally established electric jazz group Metalwood.

Winner of National Jazz Awards for Jazz Composer of the Year (2000 and 2002), Brad was awarded Musician of the Year for 2005, and was a recipient of 2006 Victor Lynch-Staunton Prize for excellence in musical achievement.

In 2008 and again in 2009, Brad took home National Jazz Awards for Trumpeter of the Year and Producer of the year.

Brad is a member of the jazz studies faculty at Capilano University, in North Vancouver, B.C."

"Jon Bentley is a Juno nominated saxophonist based in Vancouver, Canada. A versatile musician, Jon performs and records in many genres of music both as a leader and a sideman. He has recorded and/or performed professionally in concerts with musicians/ groups such as Kenny Wheeler, Seamus Blake, Dave Douglas, Mark Helias, Brad Turner, Denzal Sinclaire, Eddie Daniels, Oliver Lake, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Phil Dwyer's Saxophone Summit, The Temptations, Peggy Lee Band, Neil Swainson, and Metalwood. Aside from his participation in many recording projects as a sideman, Bentley has released two albums as a leader: "Jon Bentley Quintet: Motions" and "Diversions: American Prophecy." As a co-leader, Jon has released: "UGETSU: Live at the Cellar", "Wilson/Lee/Bentley: Escondido Dreams", and "Waxwing: A Bowl Of Sixty Taxidermists". He has performed across Canada, England, and Europe and has been featured many times on CBC Radio with live and studio recordings for Tonic, The Signal, Jazzbeat, West Coast Performance, Hot Air, and Arts National. Bentley was nominated for a Juno award in 2014 as a performer on Peggy Lee Band's album "Invitation."

Jon Bentley has studied the saxophone extensively in jazz and in the classical realm. He received his Bachelor Degree in Jazz Performance from Capilano University and was awarded the CARAS (Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences) grant. From 1997- 2000, Jon studied with critically acclaimed saxophonist Seamus Blake, both in Vancouver and in New York. In 2001, Bentley was the recipient of a Canada Council grant that sent him to London, England to study saxophone with Stan Robinson. During Bentley's two- year stint in England, Jon also sought out and studied composition and arranging with Canadian trumpeter/ composer Kenny Wheeler."

John Paton is a Canadian saxophonist, known for Frog Eyes, Kim Pensyl, and Peggy Lee.

"Canadian trombonist. Born in Summerland, BC, studied in Edmonton and Antigonish, Nova Scotia where he obtained his B. Mus. in Jazz Performance in 1992. He came to Vancouver in 1996 and has since played with all manner of local jazz, salsa and funk bands, including the Jill Townsend Big Band, Ian McDougall 12tet, Night Crawler Big Band, Fred Stride Jazz Orchestra, Hard Rubber Orchestra/Orquesta Goma Dura, Vancouver Ensemble of Jazz Improvisation, NOW Orchestra, Rumba Calzada and the Ugetsu Project. He has played with such prominent jazz musicians as Eddie Daniels, Kenny Wheeler, Slide Hampton and Dave Douglas. In the latin music field he has shared the stage with such stars as Arturo Sandoval, Jimmy Bosch and Changuito. The list of popular artists he has played and/or recorded for includes Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra Jr., Frank Valli, the Temptations, Gladys Knight, Gino Vanelli, Yes, Sam Roberts, Dan Mangan, Powder Blues, Matthew Good, Hey Ocean and the Colin James Little Big Band. When traveling Broadway musicals come to Vancouver you will usually find Rod in the orchestra pit, as has been the case with Chicago, Chorus Line, The Lion King, Wicked and Mary Poppins."

"JUNO Award-winning violinist, Meredith Bates was surrounded by music throughout her childhood. Because of this, she developed an incomparable love and dedication to her practice, winning yearly merit scholarships at The Delta Youth Orchestra, The Harry Gomez Memorial Award for excellence in music, and various Kiwanis Festival and Music Fest Canada achievements. Meredith was the youngest musician to be awarded the principal second violin chair in the BC Honours Orchestra in 1994 and took part in a youth initiative project initiated by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra that year, incorporating gifted high school string players into a professional symphony experience.

Pursuing a career in music, Ms. Bates moved across the country to Halifax, Nova Scotia to study on scholarship with Philippe Djokic at Dalhousie University. Meredith graduated with distinction from Dalhousie in 2004, earning her Bachelor of Music degree. Additional teachers and mentors included Isabelle Fournier, Anne Simons, Wallace Leung, Lorraine Grescoe and Angela Cavadas. Meredith has performed and taught extensively over the past fifteen years in both Vancouver and Halifax. While in university, she was awarded numerous scholarships from the Music Department, sat concertmaster with the Dalhousie Symphony Orchestra, and performed concertos with several orchestras in the community. In Halifax, Meredith also performed and recorded with hip-hop artists Buck 65 and Kunga 219 (of The Goods) and pop bands Matt Mayes and El Torpedo, The Heavy Blinkers, The Guthries, Gabe and Ruth Minnikin, and Tyler Mesick and The Museum Pieces, to name a few. Meredith is a founding member of Halifax-based 'hot jazz' ensemble Gypsophilia, one of the most popular swing groups at the 2004 Atlantic Jazz Festival. She also performed regularly and composed for Paul Cram's free-jazz ensemble, The Upstream Orchestra, before leaving Halifax for Vancouver in the Summer of 2004. For the past eleven years, Meredith has been pursuing a career as a freelance violinist and violist, experienced in a wide variety of musical genres, from classical music to jazz, and encompassing many folk idioms. She has been performing and recording extensively with a number of ensembles, some of which include Pugs and Crows, the Kamloops Symphony, Ford Pier and Strength of Materials String Quartet, Gentle Party, C.R. Avery and the Legal Tender String Quartet, Sean Cronin's Very Good, the Prince George Symphony, Sound Circus, and Dixie's Death Pool. Meredith has also performed and recorded in the past with musicians such as Annie Lou, Joseph Blood, The Vancouver Island Symphony, The Luscious, The Contemporary Lovers, The Shannon Scott Quintet, The Vancouver Metropolitan Orchestra, Dyad, Mark Berube, The Fugitives, Debra Jean and The Means, Rodney Decroo, Rae Spoon, and Ivan Coyote, to name a few.

Adept in several schools of violin pedagogy, Meredith has been teaching violin to students of all ages and levels of expertise for the past fifteen years. Meredith has taught both individual Suzuki Violin lessons and Suzuki Violin group classes at the prestigious Vancouver Academy of Music, where she apprenticed under Rosalind O'Keefe. Meredith has also garnered teaching experience at The Halifax Conservatory in Nova Scotia, The Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, Prussin Music, The West Vancouver Community Centre, The Delta Community Music School, and Vintage Violins in British Columbia. In addition to her work at these conservatories, Meredith has maintained a steadfast roster of private violin students throughout her teaching career and conducted several violin and fiddle workshops at festivals across Canada. Meredith has put her extensive musical training to use by taking on private and group rudimentary theory classes for young students preparing for their Royal Conservatory of Music exams. As a trained Orff-Schulwerk instructor, Meredith has also taught music for young children in a group setting. Building on her love of chamber music and strong performance background in small ensembles, she enjoys working with both youth and adult group classes wishing to learn all genres of music, such as Celtic and jazz, Eastern European 'gypsy' music, and classical string quartet repertoire."

"Cellist, improviser, composer Peggy Lee was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario. She studied classical cello, completing a bachelors degree in performance at the University of Toronto as a student of Vladimir Orloff and Denis Brott. She furthered her studies on the cello with lessons with Martha Gerschefski in Atlanta Georgia. In the fall of 1988 Peggy began a year residency with a string quartet at the Banff Centre in Banff, Alberta. It was here that she first became interested in collaborating with artists from different mediums and in veering away from the classical path. This led to a decision to move away from the known and thus to her relocating to Vancouver, B.C. where she now makes her home.

Peggy's first forays into improvisation in Vancouver happened with dancers at the EDAM (experimental dance and music) studio at the Western Front and eventually led to her meeting and joining guitarists Ron Samworth and Tony Wilson in their respective bands; as well as becoming a member of the New Orchestra Workshop, which went on to have interesting and fruitful collaborations with Butch Morris, Wadada Leo Smith, René Lussier, Barry Guy and George Lewis.

Peggy continues to collaborate frequently with Ron and Tony and with her husband, drummer Dylan van der Schyff, as well as with many other longtime musical associates including Dave Douglas, Wayne Horvitz, Robin Holcomb, Veda Hille and Lisa Miller. She also leads or co-leads a number of musical projects: The Peggy Lee Band, Film in Music, Waxwing (with Tony Wilson and Jon Bentley) and Beautiful Tool (with Mary Margaret O'Hara).

She has also collaborated extensively in theatre and dance with companies and artists such as Ruby Slippers, Rumble Theatre, Presentation House, David Hudgins, Peter Bingham and Delia Brett.

In 2005, Peggy received the Freddie Stone Award for integrity and innovation in music and in 2010 she was awarded a Jesse Richardson Theatre Award for outstanding composition."

"Cole Schmidt, is an active participant in Vancouver's creative music scene. As a composer, Cole spends the majority of his time writing and recording with 2013 Juno Award winners Pugs and Crows and the newly formed group Sick Boss. He can also be heard alongside other local artists such as Debra-Jean Creelman, Copilots, Karen Foster and John Paton's Soft Morning City. In 2013, he received the Vancouver Mayor's Arts Award for Emerging Artist in Music. Cole has toured extensively throughout North America and Europe, including a 5 week tour with Drip Audio's DarkBlueWorld in Eastern Europe and Russia and participating in the Vilnius Jazz Festival."

"James Meger was born and raised in Surrey, British Columbia. He began playing the electric bass in early high school and took up the double bass upon entering post-secondary. After a brief stint studying music and Capilano College in North Vancouver, James moved to Montreal where he earned his Bachelors in Jazz Studies from McGill University and studied with drummer/composer Chris McCann.

Despite working and studying primarily in the fields of jazz and improvised music, James' experience on the bass spans many different areas of music. In his late teens he was a member of the acclaimed Vancouver based indie-roots band, The Sumner Brothers, with which he recorded two studio albums over 3 years. Later he went on to tour Eastern Europe with art-rock band, Dark Blue World, as well as tour all over Canada with Vancouver folk act, The Fugitives.

While attending McGill University, James helped form the collective saxophone trio, Braveheart. They have toured several times around Canada and self-released one album of original music entitled Acoustic Music.

James currently resides in Vancouver, where he is an active member of many diverse groups including: The Bruno Hubert Trio, Squareheart, 4=4, O.A.B., Tom Wherrett Trio, Proud Animal, The Jaclyn Guillou Band and Cow Trance."

"Dylan van der Schyff was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1970. He now makes his home in Vancouver, Canada, where he lives with his wife, cellist Peggy Lee, and their two children. Van der Schyff attended the schools of music at the University of Victoria and, briefly, McGill University; and he studied military drumming while with the Band of the Ceremonial Guard in Ottawa. He received his MA from Simon Fraser University and is currently engaged in graduate research in music psychology at the University of Sheffield in the UK.

As a performer and producer, van der Schyff has appeared on close to 100 recordings spanning the genres of jazz, electro-acoustic, improvised, experimental and new music; he has performed in almost every major centre in Europe and North America including international festivals in Berlin, Lisbon, Stockholm, New York, Chicago, Montreal, Trento (Italy) and Molde (Norway); and he has collaborated in numerous interdisciplinary projects involving theatre, dance and film. A partial list of notable performance and recording collaborators includes: George Lewis, Joelle Léandre, Dave Douglas, Mark Helias, Peggy Lee, Eyvind Kang, Nicole Mitchell, Brad Turner, Tony Wilson, Wayne Horvitz, Marilyn Crispell, Torsten Muller, Robin Holcolmb, Michael Moore, Ellery Eskelin, Sylvie Courvoisier, Rob Mazurek, Talking Pictures, Ken Vandermark, Paul Rutherford, John Butcher, Tobias Delius, Louis Sclavis, Evan Parker, Mark Dresser, Fred Frith, and Gary Peacock. Van der Schyff has also performed as a sideman with Roswell Rudd, John Zorn, Butch Morris, Misha Mengelberg, Georg Graewe, Oliver Lake, Wadada Leo Smith and the Kenny Werner Sextet with Randy Brecker.

Van der Schyff has served on the music faculty at Capilano University in Vancouver, Canada, since 2009. He also served on faculty at the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music between 2002-2005, and at the Vancouver Institute for Creative Music in 2006. Additionally, he has given seminars and workshops at the University of Indiana and at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. Van der Schyff has appeared on Austrian television and Swedish radio as well as NPR, the CBC and Radio Canada. Articles about his work as an improviser have appeared in publications such as Downbeat, Jazz Times, The Globe and Mail, The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Chicago Reader, The Wire, Coda, and MUZIK."

"Pianist, composer, librettist, singer and songwriter Robin Holcomb has performed internationally as a solo artist and the leader of various ensembles at venues including Carnegie Hall, The Meltdown Festival, The United Nations, Teatro Manzoni, the Moers Music Festival, The Festival of Perth, The Hong Kong Arts Festival, Arts at St. Ann's, the Guimarães, Verona, San Francisco, Vancouver and Earshot Jazz Festivals, Roulette, Royce Hall at UCLA and the Seattle Opera House.

Recent recordings include The Point of It All, Solos (Songlines) and John Brown's Body (Tzadik). The Big Time, Little Three, Rockabye and Robin Holcomb are four critically acclaimed recordings of Ms. Holcomb's songs and instrumental compositions on the Nonesuch label. Other recordings featuring her performances and innovative arrangements include Things About Comin' My Way: A Tribute to the Music of the Mississippi Sheiks (Red Hen), Rogues Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys, The Anthology of American Folk Music: Revisited (Shout Factory), Burt Bacharach and Serge Gainsbourg tribute compilations (Tzadik) and Bill Frisell's Nashville and Kaddish.

Ms. Holcomb is a founder and co-director of The New York Composers Orchestra and WACO (The Washington Composers Orchestra), ensembles for which she is also conductor, pianist and a principal composer. Other current performing ensembles include a longstanding duo project with cellist Peggy Lee and The Robin Holcomb Ensemble. Composing instrumental and vocal music for a wide variety of chamber ensembles and soloists, she has been commissioned to create scores for dance, film and theatre.

Her most recent song cycle We Are All Failing Them, a sidewise regard of the Donner Party saga with film and magical objects, premiered at Seattle's Northwest Film Forum. An earlier song cycle with film, The Utopia Project was based on histories and artifacts from utopian communities which thrived in the Pacific Northwest in the late 1800s and premiered at Mass MoCA. Angels at the Four Corners, a song cycle reflecting the composer's experiences sharecropping tobacco in North Carolina and O, Say a Sunset, regarding of the life and work of American environmentalist and author Rachel Carson both toured the United States. Ms. Holcomb collaborated with composer Wayne Horvitz on the song cycle Smokestack Arias (tales of women involved in the Everett Massacre), The Heartsong of Charging Elk (based on the novel by James Welch) and was a featured performer in his Joe Hill: Sixteen Actions for Orchestra, Vocalists and Soloist. In recent years, she has created extended suites celebrating the historic legacy of Seattle landmarks (Washington Hall, Hitt Fireworks Factory) for youth orchestras, bands and choir.

Ms. Holcomb's work has been recognized and generously supported by grants and fellowships from, among others, The MAP Fund, The National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer, 4Culture, Artist Trust, The National Performance Network and the Office of Arts & Culture."