Former lakecity resident and now internationally acclaimed jazz musician Ryan Oliver will be returning home for a concert with his band The Cookers at the Gibraltar Room, Thursday, April 14, at 7:30 p.m.
Oliver developed a love for jazz at Columneetza secondary and studied for several years with private music instructor Michael Butterfield, eventually performing with the lakecity’s Hot Buttered Blues Band.
Now 28, Oliver maintains a busy performance schedule. Along with leading his own groups, he is a member of several prominent groups including Terry Lukwiski’s Quintet, and Tonight at Noon, an octet that performs the music of Charles Mingus.
He has been a featured performer in many jazz festivals, including the Du Maurier, Distillery, Burlington, Uptown, Ottawa, Kootenay, and Oakville Jazz Festivals as well as the famed Montreaux Jazz Festival in Switzerland.
He has performed as both a leader and sideman in most of Canada’s premier jazz clubs and has shared the stage with many top shelf musicians including Victor Lewis, Vic Juris, Joe Cohn, Phil Dwyer, Pat LaBarbera, Bob McLaren, Terry Clarke, and Richard Whiteman. In 2006, Oliver toured India with the Shuffle Demons alongside Rich Underhill and Perry White.
His musical training includes spending a year studying in Amsterdam at the request of Misha Mengelberg.
From 2007 to 2009 Oliver lived in New York, completing a masters degree in jazz performance at Rutgers University. He studied saxophone with Eric Alexander and arranging/composing with Conrad Herwig.
In his final year at Rutgers, Oliver conducted the Undergraduate Big Band and also taught undergraduate saxophone lessons. He has also served as clinician at universities and high schools throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Oliver’s debut CD Convergence released by Art of Life Records was voted one of the Top 10 Jazz CD releases of 2007 in the January/February 2008 issue of Canada’s Coda Magazine by Daryl Angier and managing editor Andrew Scott. Joining Oliver on Convergence are Duncan Hopkins on acoustic bass, Bob McLaren on drums, Bernie Senensky on piano and Jake Wilkinson on trumpet.
Oliver’s five member-band The Cookers came together in Toronto in March 2010 as a way for five like-minded, and distinguished Canadian musicians and music teachers to play together on a weekly basis and create an environment where original music could be performed in a live setting.
A couple of small Toronto clubs took a chance on having the band perform and, before long, a buzz was circulating in the city’s artistic community.
The band members’ students were coming down consistently to hear their teachers, garnering inspiration from the experience, and a group of regulars began showing up each week as word got out.
Filling out the Cookers are Tim Hamel on trumpet, Richard Whiteman on piano, Alex Coleman on bass, and Morgan Childs on drums.
Oliver is also a member of Juno award-winning blues/rock performer Derek Miller’s group.
The band has travelled throughout North America, including performances at the New Orleans Jazz Festival, and Toronto’s Dundas Square.
Oliver is featured alongside Tim Hamel’s trumpet in the horn section on Derek Miller’s Juno-nominated recording Derek Miller and Double Trouble, featuring Stevie Ray Vaughn’s heralded rhythm section, Double Trouble and musical icon Willie Nelson.