Profile
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 as 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 and Ottawa’s 13 Strings. With the groundbreaking trio Sanctuary he has toured across Canada, USA, Europe and Asia.
A fluent improviser and interpreter comfortable in the stylistic boundary areas between jazz and classical, Jeff has recorded and performed with the likes of Jerry Granelli, Ben Caplan, Barry Guy, Maya Homburger, John Potter, Peter-Anthony Togni, Suzie Leblanc, India Gailey, and Tom Allen. He is active in many musical projects including the Blackwood Duo, New Hermitage, Upstream Music and 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 as “virtuosic and mystical” by The Independent, UK and “virtuosic, dominant and hypnotic” by the celebrated UK critic Norman Lebrecht.
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 records, Tafelmusik 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, bass clarinet ensembles and chamber jazz groups. 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 a co-founder and past co-artistic director of the Upstream Music Association, and is the regular conductor of the Upstream Orchestra, their resident jazz composer’s orchestra.
Recent CD releases include To Dream of Silence featuring the music of Jeff Reilly and Christos Hatzis and the widely acclaimed Lost and Found, featuring the duo Blackwood.
Many of Jeff’s other releases can be found on his Bandcamp page here.
Quotes
“Jeff Reilly is an undisputed master of the Bass Clarinet who
has gone to the end to explore its sonic universe.” Halifax Chronicle Herald“Blackwood’s LOST AND FOUND is soaring, enveloping, comforting, and it creates atmospheres that are both mysterious and languid. A rather unclassifiable album that we highly recommend if you are the type to let yourself loose”. Justin Bernard, La Scena Musicale, Oct. 2021
