Noam Lemish Quartet Album Release Concert

Noam Lemish’s new album There’s beauty enough in being here offers a gently ravishing program inspired by a Fernando Pessoa poem about experiencing the numinous nature of even the most everyday occurrences. The compositions draw on a broad stylistic palette while investigating a vivid expanse of emotional terrain. Translated from Portuguese, Pessoa’s verse centers on the lines: “Let's pay attention only to where we are. There's enough beauty in being here and not somewhere else.”

Join us for an evening celebrating the release of this new quartet recording featuring all original music performed by a band featuring award-winning Canadian jazz greats:

Noam Lemish, piano

Sundar Viswanathan, sax

Dan Fortin, bass

Nick Fraser, drums

ABOUT THE BAND

Noam Lemish is a pianist, composer, scholar and educator. He has appeared in numerous performances and conducted workshops across Canada, the US, Europe, and in Bhutan and has released multiple albums, including most recently the JUNO-nominated Twelve (2022).In many ways, Lemish’s transcultural identity is reflected in his music. Over the course of a quarter century of musical creation he’s always sought to expand the scope of his exploration, often blurring or ignoring deeply etched boundaries between genres, peoples, and traditions. He’s a jazz artist and a classical composer of chamber works, an improviser and an accompanist, an intrepid cross-cultural investigator and an interpreter of contemporary composition.

Sundar Viswanathan is a Juno Award winning jazz and world music artist who was born into a musical family in India (though his earliest influences came from Western acts like Pink Floyd, Rush, Yes, and Michael Jackson). A colleague of Lemish’s at York University in Toronto, he’s also a vocalist, songwriter and composer who’s worked with a diverse constellation of jazz masters, including Wynton Marsalis, Dave Douglas, Rez Abbasi, Charles Tolliver, Frank Foster, Andrew Hill, and Lee Konitz.

Dan Fortin was born and raised in Peterborough, Ontario. His eclectic tastes have led to work with a wide variety of musicians in the jazz, rock and pop worlds, including Bernice, Aline’s étoile magique, The Allison Au Quartet, Emilie-Claire Barlow, Laila Biali, Will Bonness, Harley Card, Kieran Daly, Tara Davidson, Matt Dusk, Alex Goodman, Jon Gordon, Jocelyn Gould, Ethan Iverson, Andy Milne, Mike Murley, and many others. He’s been lucky enough to play at a number of great international venues, including Cafe Oto, 55 Bar, Smalls, SFJAZZ Center, the Monterey Jazz Festival, Sunset/Sunside, JazzDock, The Cotton Club (Tokyo), Jamboree, and Jimmy Glass.

Nick Fraser has been a drummer and composer in the Toronto new jazz and improvised music community for over twenty years and has collaborated with a veritable who’s who of Canadian jazz and improvised music, as well as American jazz heavyweights such as Tony Malaby, Kris Davis, Marilyn Crispell, Anthony Braxton, and William Parker. Among the other projects he’s involved in are pianist Florian Hoefner’s trio, a duo with pianist John Kameel Farah, trumpeter Lina Allemano’s Four, Ugly Beauties, Peripheral Vision, and Titanium Riot.

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