Bio/Photos
Jeff Reilly leads a multifaceted life as a bass clarinettist, composer, conductor, and producer.
Jeff Reilly is a musician with a broad and extensive scope of work. A twice Juno-nominated bass clarinetist as well as a composer, conductor, improviser, and producer, Jeff has appeared a soloist with the Elora Singers, Symphony Nova Scotia, the Winnipeg New Music Festival, Elmer Iseler Singers, the Canadian Chamber Choir, Calgary’s Luminous Voices, Ottawa’s 13 Strings and across Canada, USA, Europe and Asia in the groundbreaking trio Sanctuary. His approach to music blurs any simple distinctions between improvisation and composition, and he strives to do it with such integrity that we are reminded that these distinctions are moot.
Jeff has recorded and performed with Jerry Granelli, Ben Caplan, Barry Guy, Maya Homburger, John Potter, Peter Togni, Suzie Leblanc, India Gailey and Tom Allen. He is active in many musical projects including the Blackwood Duo, New Hermitage, Upstream Music and with James Shaw’s Vesuvius Big Band. As a soloist on the German ECM New Series label, his interpretation of Peter-Anthony Togni’s Lamentations of Jeremiah was praised by the British critic Norman Lebrecht: “The virtuoso clarinetist Jeff Reilly extends his cadenzas across the history of sound, from monotony to modernism, in a performance that is dominant and often hypnotic”
A long-time music producer with the Canadian Broadcasting corporation, he has produced thousands of hours of radio programming, including 4 multi-episode documentaries on music for the program IDEAS. He has produced hundreds of concert recordings of classical, jazz, world and contemporary music, hundreds of studio sessions and over 25 CD’s of Canadian jazz and classical music including releases on CBC record, Tafelmusic Media, Warner Classics UK, Centrediscs, NAXOS and Leaf Music. Over the years 6 of his CD productions have received Juno nominations.
Jeff has composed dozens of works for orchestra, big band, jazz composer’s orchestras, bass clarinet ensembles, chamber jazz groups and for his duo Blackwood with long-time collaborator Peter-Anthony Togni. In 2022 he received an Arts Nova Scotia grant to write a suite of compositions for James Shaw’s Vesuvius Big Band, to be premiered at the Halifax Jazz Festival in 2023.
Jeff is the regular conductor of the Upstream Orchestra, a jazz composer’s orchestra based in Halifax.
Click here for Jeff’s BANDCAMP page
