Join us for an evening celebrating the release of the Noam Lemish 12tet's debut album, Twelve!

"one of 2022's most delight-filled recordings" - R. Kamins, Step Tempest Blog

The Ensemble:

Noam Lemish (pianist / composer)

Terry Promane (musical director / conductor)

Mike Murley and Kelly Jefferson (tenor sax and soprano sax)

Allison Au (alto sax)

Kevin Turcotte and Jim Lewis (trumpet)

William Carn and Karl Silveira (trombone)

Ted Quinlan (guitar)

Mark Duggan (vibraphone)

Laura Swankey (vocals)

Andrew Downing (bass)

Derek Gray (drums)

About the release:

Pianist-composer Noam Lemish celebrates the release of his latest album, Twelve by leading a formidable jazz 12tet, presenting a captivating set of original compositions. This chamber-sized jazz orchestra - a nimble, yet powerful ensemble - features a stellar cast that includes many of Canada’s most prominent jazz artists. Growing up “in-between” cultures and places, having lived for extended periods in Israel, the United States and now Canada, Lemish’s music fuses an array of disparate influences and traditions. In Twelve, Lemish and his orchestra distill this integrated, transcultural musical life into a compelling, poignant, and joyful artistic statement.

The evening’s performance showcases Lemish’s distinct and innovative voice as a composer and pianist. The pieces that comprise Twelve stretch the conventional boundaries of the jazz idiom in more ways than one. Pushing jazz structures in new directions, the works showcase inventive, long-form, through-composed music that seamlessly integrates soaring melodies, exquisite large ensemble writing and orchestration with stunning improvised solos. Owing to Lemish’s multi-cultural upbringing and life experiences, the compositions also reveal a musical vision that embraces genre-bending as an essential feature. Lemish’s music effortlessly blends his rootedness in jazz and western art music with the musical influences of his Israeli childhood and Eastern-European Jewish heritage.

The orchestra assembled by Lemish for this performance features an All-Star band from Canada’s contemporary jazz scene, made-up of multiple JUNO award winning musicians: Mike Murley and Kelly Jefferson (tenor sax and soprano sax), Allison Au (alto sax), Kevin Turcotte and Jim Lewis (trumpet), William Carn and Karl Silveira (trombone), Ted Quinlan (guitar), Mark Duggan (vibraphone), Laura Swankey (vocals), Andrew Downing (bass), and Derek Gray (drums). Each of these acclaimed artists display their deep musicality and breathtaking virtuosity at every turn. JUNO award winning trombonist/composer/arranger and long-time member of Rob McConnell’s Boss Brass, Terry Promane, serves as musical director and conductor.

For reviews and media dedicated to Twelve visit: https://linktr.ee/noamlemish

This concert is generously sponsored by the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies and the York University Department of Music.

ABOUT NOAM LEMISH:

Noam Lemish has never felt inclined to pick a lane. Maybe his hyphenated identity as an Israeli-American-Canadian has helped inspire his multiplicity and general disinclination to follow stylistic guidelines. Whatever the reason, over the course of two decades of intensive musical study and 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. He contains multitudes.

Based for the past decade in Toronto, Lemish is best known for leading or co-leading several celebrated ensembles. The critically hailed 2018 album Pardes features the quartet he co-leads with Israeli guitarist and oud expert Amos Hoffman. As director of the Israeli-Iranian Musical Initiative (I=I), a multiple grant-winning collective of Israeli and Iranian performers, Lemish has brought Israeli and Iranian musicians and audiences together, in dialogue and celebration, challenging the formal political hostilities between Iran and Israel through critically acclaimed and sold-out concerts at major venues and festivals.

He's forged a deep creative bond with pianist/composer W.A. Mathieu, with whom he studied formally for nearly a decade. They captured the evolving relationship on the albums The Magic Clavier Book I (2015) and The Magic Clavier Book II (2018), showcasing compositions written by Mathieu especially for Lemish. He continues to perform and record with veteran drummer/composer George Marsh. Their recordings together include 2016’s The Turning with bassist Jim Kerwin, and the duo sessions Nightfall (2013) and Yes And (2008), an impressive debut recording focusing on Lemish’s original compositions. www.noamlemish.com