Frank Deresti is a musician, composer, performer, recording artist, and teacher. His adventurous approach to life and music has taken him across the country several times as a singer-songwriter, guitarist, bassist, and multi-instrumentalist with various acts covering an impressive range of styles and genres.

Frank began studying the guitar at the age of 8, and received an Honours Bachelor of Music Degree from Carleton University in classical guitar performance in 2000. Since then he has maintained an active performing, teaching, and recording career. 

As a sideman, band leader, co-writer, or session player, Frank brings an undeniable enthusiasm, skill, and love of music to every project. His recording credits include contributions to dozens of releases, as well as offerings to the world of film and podcast soundtracks. Always an enthusiastic collaborator, Frank continues to pursue new opportunities for cooperative music-making, and new experiences to stoke the creative fires. 

A passionate and inspired teacher, Frank is a guitar, theory, bass and songwriting instructor at the Algoma Conservatory of Music, where he is the founding director of the Guitar Ensemble program. He has mentored several classical, jazz and popular guitar students, many of whom have gone on to receive awards at the provincial level, established themselves in successful music careers, and/or continued on a lifelong path of music-making and enjoyment. He has also been an adjunct professor and director of jazz studies at Algoma University in Sault Ste. Marie since 2001, where he has developed and teaches courses in guitar, bass, jazz theory and improvisation, songwriting, the music business, and various ensembles.

Frank continues to actively seek out new avenues to expand his musical pallet and to help elevate his own and others’ projects to new levels.

Mike Essoudry is known as a sensitive yet active and responsive drummer, with strong musical intuition. After completing his Bachelor of Music at Carleton, he received a Master of Music degree (Jazz Drumset Performance) from McGill University in 2003. Mike is a busy performer and composer on the Ottawa music scene playing with many projects in the funk, jazz, and improvised music scene such as The Megan Jerome Together Ensemble, Rakestar, Atlantis Jazz Ensemble, Weddings and Funerals, and Gephilte as well as leading his own groups like the Bank Street Bonbons, The Alouette Space Agency and the Epoch Quintet. Mike is also an active drumset teacher and has been a dance accompanist/composer with Ottawa’s Propeller Dance for the past 14 years. 

Recent graduate of Wilfrid Laurier University, Keiko Larocque is a young soprano hailing from the small northern community of Chapleau, Ontario. Having curated her own voice studio in her hometown, teaching privately and directing choirs throughout her post-secondary journey has given her an opportunity to pass along the knowledge and experience she has gained through her love of music. Keiko has also taught in Sault Ste. Marie at the Northern Arts Academy; she has found such joy in the beautiful music making of the NAA and the kindness and care the studio has for their students and faculty.

Having earned her BA (Algoma University), BMus in Voice Performance and Opera Diploma (WLU), Keiko has studied under the tutelage of Agnes McCarthy, Jennie Such, Leslie Fagan, and Kimberly Barber.

Her past roles include Anne Frank in Cecilia Livingston’s Singing Only Softly, Beth in Mark Adamo’s Little Women, and Ollob/Man1 in the world premiere of Borderless (Alaina Viau, Ashley Seward, and Troy DeFour). Other roles in excerpts at Laurier include Violetta (La traviata), Fiordiligi (Cosi fan tutte), Gretel (Hansel and Gretel), and Maria (West Side Story). Keiko’s KWSO debut was alongside drag star Thorgy Thor and conductor Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser last October (‘22). 

Having taken the program as a student back in 2019 when GLISMI was finding its wings in Sault Ste. Marie, Keiko is excited to embark on another GLISMI journey as faculty this year. Rekindling her love of jazz and songwriting will be the cherry on top of her classical skillset.

Singer-songwriter Megan Jerome creates sparkling, soulful songs drawing on vintage and contemporary roots and jazz.

If you’ve never caught Megan Jerome’s life-affirming performances, you’re in for a treat. Variously described as roots, jazz, cabaret and R&B, her songs are really just 100% Megan. By intuitively connecting with her audience, Jerome draws us into her stories, her joy, and her love of life:

Here are the songs that are in my heart – that tell stories of magical moments in everyday love- dancing in the kitchen, or in the backyard, midnight blue, starshine, twinkle lights and table wine, earthy love and love divine, spinning stars on threads of twine – your toes in the warm sand, a campfire waltz, twirling dancers, gum so your breath is sweet, a moment of connection so profound you just have to sing! It’s a painting, it’s a bouquet that fills you with so much joy your heart bursts, it’s singing the glorious feeling that comes when you feel completely infused with love, laughter, wonder, togetherness. Like every single person, my life is enriched with the deepest sorrows, and the soaring-est joys – and my songs are an overflowing of that. Pedalling as fast as I can down the streets of New Orleans, to dance in the crowd to the brass bands playing their hearts out on the corners, to the quiet tenderness of being in our own home, delighting in cozy nooks, with a morning cup of coffee, or an evening glass of wine. 

“Ottawa singer-songwriter-pianist Megan Jerome strips her music down to its bare essentials…The pure-voiced Jerome has crafted an intimate and highly personal disc that pulls from folk, classical and jazz sources to build songs with their own distinctive charms.” 

—Peter Hum, Best Bets, The Ottawa Citizen

meganjerome.com

Kalle Mattson is a Juno & Polaris Music Prize nominated singer/songwriter based in Canada. Since 2009 he has released four full-length albums & two EPs to critical & commercial acclaim. His first music video for ‘Thick As Thieves’ gained over 1,000,000 views & was covered by Time Magazine, NPR & The Huffington Post. It was followed in 2014 by Mattson’s third full-length studio album, the Polaris Music Prize-nominated ‘Someday, The Moon Will Be Gold’, which was inspired by his hometown on the Canadian/U.S. border and the death of his mother five years prior. It received glowing reviews from Pitchfork, Pop Matters, Rolling Stone, & Exclaim called it – “simply, a benchmark in fearless songwriting.” It was promoted by multiple tours across Canada, the US & Europe. August 2015 saw the release of a new EP, ‘Avalanche’, which Mattson described as a mini-LP concerning the twenty-something miasma of “anxiety, nostalgia, the past, the future.” The music video for ‘Avalanche’ received widespread media attention & was nominated for a 2016 Juno Award, a 2016 Much Music Video Award & won the 2016 Prism Prize. On 2018’s ‘Youth.’, Mattson set out to make a coming-of-age album about the in-between days of post-adolescence and pre-adulthood. It was released to rave reviews with Dominionated saying – “file it under instant classic.” His newest project ‘summersets’, a duo with long-time collaborator Andrew Sowka, debuted in 2020 with a collection of narrative driven songs set in small town Northern Ontario centred around two characters who meet as summer is coming to end. Their debut full-length, ‘small town story’ is due June 9th 2023. Mattson currently teaches at Carleton University.

https://www.kallemattson.com

Matt Warnock is an internationally recognized performance and guitar educator. Matt has performed in concert halls and at jazz festivals in the US, Canada, Brazil, New Zealand, U.K., France, Belgium, Estonia, and Latvia. He’s shared the stage with Randy Brecker, Slide Hampton, Stefon Harris, and other legendary jazz musicians. 

As well as being an in-demand performer, Matt has been a professor of guitar at Western Illinois University, Leeds Conservatoire, and the University of Chester. He has also held the position of Senior Examiner at the London College of Music (RCM Division). 

Currently Matt lives in Sault Ste. Marie, where he runs the #1 jazz guitar site online, www.mwgcourses.com, and spends his time writing and recording original music when he’s not hiking with his wife and two pointers.

[email protected]

Through her four albums and extensive performance schedule across North America, Canadian pianist Andree-Ann Deschenes is recognized as one of the world’s foremost advocates of the Latin American piano repertoire. For her efforts, The Whole Note celebrates her as a “very gifted pianist” with “a tremendous amount of energy, humour and astonishing talent”, while her career has gained the attention of outlets such as The Villa-Lobos Magazine, Classical Post, MainlyPiano, and Voyage LA.

Deschenes’ recording career is formidable, with an output as decorated as it is prolific. Praise in the media comes from the blog Music for Several Instruments, who remarked that Deschenes “puts across the regional Brazilian folkloric flavour with cool clarity,” as well as The Whole Note, who celebrated her third album, Villa Lobos / Castro, as “a rich program revealing… skill and artistic mastery.”

Further recognition has come for her most recent album, The Ovalle Project (2018), a comprehensive two-disc record that revives the work of late Brazilian composer Jayme Ovalle—as of now the only commercially available recording of his piano works. In reviewing the album, Classical Post called Deschenes “the perfect person to take on [Ovalle’s music] and bring life back into his works,” while Mainly Piano remarked that “the variety in the moods, intensity and tonal colors is vast [in The Ovalle Project], and Ms. Deschenes has taken the time and attention as well as research to get inside of the music.”

Her education includes a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Claremont Graduate University, a Master of Music degree in Afro-Latin music from California State University Los Angeles, and an Advanced Diploma in Jazz from Toronto’s Humber College.

For more info, www.aadpiano.com

An award-winning trumpeter/composer/educator and recent masters graduate of the Berklee Global Jazz Institute, Andrew McAnsh was born and raised in the modest city of Cambridge, Ontario. There, at the age of 12, upon his first exposure to the sounds of Miles Davis and John Coltrane, he fell in love with music. Now 33, and an established professional musician with his own inventive, contemporary style, McAnsh still pays homage to the contributions of these two artists, as his greatest personal influences. McAnsh has performed and studied with notable artists including Esperanza Spalding, Barry Harris, Danilo Pérez, John Patitucci, Brian Blade, Laila Biali, Larnell Lewis, Bill Dobbins, Terri-Lyne Carrington, George Garzone, Pat LaBarbera, Hilario Duran, and Bobby Shew at major international festivals such as the Newport Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, Panama Jazz Festival, Kobe Jazz Walk, Toronto Jazz Festival, Montreal International Jazz Festival and many others.

https://andrewmcansh.wordpress.com