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  • The Shape of the Guelph Jazz Society Ensembles for Fall of 2026

    Hi folks,

    Since January of 2026 a bunch of ensembles have popped up to meet the needs of the Guelph jazz community. Some of the ensembles, like the Big Band or the Parade Band, were started aspirationally in an attempt to imagine ways we might meet the needs of local musicians and listeners, while others were started in response to an articulated need like the Little Band and the Wyndham Gardens band. In all cases lots of valuable lessons have been taught to the Guelph Jazz Society’s leadership by our participants and so looking towards the pick up of activity in the fall of 2026 there’s a few organisational changes that will be made to better line up the opportunity, need, and resources of the community.

    As of August 2026 our slate of offerings is:

    Big Band – 19 players. Aims to blend a range of skills, levels of experience, ages, genders, ethnicities. Runs fall to spring.

    Little Band – 8 players. Medium ensemble aiming to blend the arranging and orchestration of large ensemble playing with the freedom of small ensemble playing. Runs year round.

    Parade Band – At least 4 players, often more! A drop-in band that meets and plays in public spaces with the goal of increasing access and exposure to music making in Guelph. Runs summers.

    Wyndham Gardens Band – A professional band tasked with supporting the growing Guelph swing dance community, ensuring that dancers have ample opportunity to dance to a high quality live music. Runs year round.

    From running the Little Band I learned there’s two needs in the community for smaller ensembles that run somewhat contrary to each other. On one hand there’s a growing appetite for medium sized ensemble music that is more on the contemporary end of the jazz tradition that explores the possibilities of the ensemble type further. On the other hand there’s a broad enthusiasm for fundamental jazz combo skills, the kind of playing that gets people off the page, syncing up with their bandmates, and discovering their own vocabulary. 

    As a result a new ensemble is being added to the Guelph Jazz Society’s offerings, the Combo Band. For those who participated and might be curious, the Little Band as it was run in the Winter of 2026 will continue as the Little Band with clearer messaging about the purpose of the ensemble and what it does. The Combo Band will be a continuation of the Little Band as its been run during the Summer of 2026, where students have been resoundingly enthusiastic about the skills the ensemble focuses on and the forum it creates to field fundamental questions about the jazz tradition, the collaborations, and the collaborators.

    The Big Band will be largely unchanged, other than adding a vibraphone seat! I would say the Big Band has succeeded beyond my wildest ambitions. The Big Band has quickly become its own community and the level of good will, bonding, and supportive musicianship has reached a point of self sufficiency and self perpetuation. We have a vibraphone now though, so a spot for a vibraphonist will be added!

    Here’s what things will look like starting this fall…

    Big Band – 20 players. Aims to blend a range of skills, levels of experience, ages, genders, ethnicities. Runs fall to spring on Tuesday nights.

    The Guelph Jazz Society Big Band is a community ensemble that intentionally brings together musicians of different ages, experience levels, backgrounds, and identities to learn from one another through jazz. Beginners rehearse alongside seasoned professionals, students play beside retirees, and players from diverse musical traditions contribute their own perspectives to the ensemble. Running from fall through spring, the band has grown into a vibrant, self-sustaining community where mentorship, friendship, and mutual support are the ensemble’s purpose. Rehearses Tuesday evenings from September for May.

    Chairs

    • Reeds: alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones, clarinets, and flute.
    • Brass: trumpets and flugals, trombones and sousaphone.
    • Rhythm: vibraphone, guitar, piano, bass, drums.
    • Vocalists: high voice, low voice.

    Combo Bands – 4 to 6 players, mixing horns and rhythm. Beginner to intermediate level ensemble playing for people looking to gain confidence and experience in the jazz tradition. Meets Wednesday evenings, or Thursday afternoons.

    The Guelph Jazz Society Combo Band is a weekly learning ensemble designed to help musicians develop the practical skills needed to collaborate and express themselves fluently in the jazz tradition. Through playing in small groups, participants strengthen core jazz musicianship including listening, communication, improvisation, repertoire, groove, and ensemble interaction. The Combo Band provides a welcoming, supportive environment where players can ask questions, build confidence, and develop their own musical voice while learning alongside others. Whether you’re looking to get off the page, deepen your understanding of jazz, or become a more responsive and expressive ensemble member, the Combo Band offers an ideal place to grow. Reherases Wednesday nights, or Thursday afternoons.

    Octet – Presents music at the contemporary edge of the jazz tradition. Meets 6 times a year to give public performances.

    The Guelph Jazz Society Octet is an every-other-month ensemble dedicated to exploring the rich possibilities of the medium-sized jazz ensemble. Bringing together adventurous musicians from across the community, the Octet performs repertoire that bridges the jazz tradition with more contemporary approaches to composition, improvisation, and ensemble interaction. The ensemble provides a collaborative space for experienced players to develop their musicianship while contributing to a regular series of medium-sized ensemble performances in Guelph. By creating opportunities to rehearse and perform music rarely heard outside professional settings, the Little Band expands the city’s jazz ecosystem and offers audiences a fresh perspective on what jazz ensembles can be. Meets 6 times a year.

    Chairs: trumpet, trombone, alto sax, tenor sax, guitar, piano, bass, drums.

    Parade Band – Drop-in band for all ages and skills playing familiar and upbeat music. Meets Monday nights in summer.

    The Guelph Jazz Society Parade Band is a free, drop-in community ensemble that brings jazz into the streets throughout the summer. The band explores the lively tradition of parade and street music while developing the skills needed to perform as a mobile ensemble. Participants build confidence in memorization, listening, balance, and musical communication while enjoying a fun, welcoming environment open to a wide range of musicians. Beyond rehearsals, the Parade Band plays at festivals, community celebrations, and civic events throughout Guelph, contributing to the city’s cultural life by bringing live music into public spaces and creating joyful, accessible musical experiences for everyone. Meets Monday nights in the summer.

    Simple music orchestrated for everything under the sun. If you play it we’ll get you a part for it!

    Wyndham Gardens Band – A professional band tasked with supporting the growing Guelph swing dance community, ensuring that dancers have ample opportunity to dance to a high quality live music. Runs year round.

    My hope is that this slate of offerings gives opportunities to all the musicians of Guelph to get involved at the level of play they’re at and interested in, with the level of commitment that suits them, with the opportunity to contribute as they’re able. There’s no band that’s really for everyone, but we hope to provide opportunities that could be for anyone.

    Liam Gallagher

    Artistic Director of the Guelph Jazz Society

  • How to Be a “Professional Bandleader”

    I recently had a musician I am mentoring ask me how to be a “professional bandleader”, that’s very sweet. Here are some renewed thoughts, so that 2026’s question doesn’t get 201X’s answer.

    What’s a professional band leader, and do we still have any in 2026?

    If you’re making music for money in Canada you hear the idea of professionalism invoked frequently. This musician is “a real pro”, or “I can’t believe how unprofessional that was, they were 20 minutes late!”, or the promise: “Are you free on the 12th? This one’s a real pro gig.”

    To unpack the question of what it means to be a pro band leader in Canada in 2026, I think you have to make sense of three things. Professionalism generally, the culture of professionals, and the fast moving socio-economic landscape of musicianship.

    The Profession

    I have no interest in being pedantic here, so I’ll just say that in music the term is generally used to describe the quality of work and the people performing it, and not really a career designation. It’s not a parallel to medicine or engineering where a professional organisation legally licenses you to practice the profession.

    That said, Canadians are a people united by a common tax code. There are things dentists and clarinetists must do in common if they intend to accept more than $10,000 a year from customers. Printers produce physical documents, banks process payments, and apps are sharing files for quotes, contracts, and all the other detritus of work.

    Musicians are well acquainted of the realities of being a musician, and are typically not interested in checking out each other’s income tax work flow. This is not the type of professionalism that people are keen to discuss. At most there is a sense of the tax workflow being a rite of passage, the problems you get to have when you’re at least that much successful.

    Instead the term “professional” is similar to the pro model of a cell phone, where products that aren’t intended for people who use their iPad in a professional capacity, but instead pro demarcates an extended feature set or improved specifications. There is some light between the profession and being professional.

    How to Be Professional

    There is a ghost from the past where musicianship remembers going to see a professional musician in the same way one can go to see a professional dentist today. It still exists in the form of going to see a major symphony orchestra or a union hall musical theatre, but we understand that music professionalism is not on the upswing.

    It’s telling who will refuse the designation, because we learn about what the designation carries in inverse. I know folk musicians who will refuse the label “professional” but have LLCs with HST numbers that you need to know to book them. These folkies overlap with members of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in ways they would not like to emphasize.

    So music professionalism also has in and out groups and all the things that come with the territory. Generations of professional musicians have carved out the skills of the trade, the requisite tools, and the manner of communication and dress. In time these symbols of the musician’s journey become their heritage, and so valid modes of personal expression. It’s the tradition of professional musicianship.

    A personal example, I have a home sewn cloth given to me by the Guelph Jazz Society’s attorney that helps tell the story of the early years of the organisation that is very precious to me, even though I empty my trombone’s spit valve into it. Horn players adopt the social etiquette of sanitation, and I’ve been around long enough to know about the spit rag though, if not how to play the trombone well. If you think that humans ought to be consistent you might find a few contradictions there!

    There’s a mixing here, of a professional skill set, a social and economic class of musicians who bonds through shared practices, and the cultural identity they produce.

    The Trouble with Time

    The modern professional musician identity seems to have culminated through the 20th century, combining the roles of the touring musician, the stage entertainer, the studio musician, and the creative artist. This is an imprecise and blurry telling of a imprecise and blurry received wisdom. If there were an exact manual I would have just given it to my student.

    Then in the early 2000s the recording industry went bust, tech companies captured music distribution, the expense of touring skyrocketed, and there’s been a cost of living crisis in Canada at least since I’ve had to pay to live. The generation of musicians growing up during these shifts was taught by folks who learned the biz in am already bygone era.

    This is a conundrum, because like so many other traditions, the traditions of professionalism are often worthwhile on their own. Perhaps being in your seat 10 minutes before the rehearsal with a sharpened pencil and a hot coffee becomes a meaningless signifier when there’s no more orchestra gigs, but wasn’t it nice to catch up with your stand partner? Surely some of this cultural practice must be worth passing on to the next generation.

    The Orphaned Culture of Professionalism

    I went to Kelowna, BC this May and picked the brains of 30 or 40 jazz musicians, and the consensus was that there was only one musician in the city of over 130,000 people who earned a living by just playing jazz, kudos! It was estimated that there were probably only 15-20 other musicians who were full time, if you count teaching music lessons, doing music therapy, and so forth. Maybe double that if you include.work outside of musical income earning.

    While everyone was eager to talk about the importance of professionalism, there few places to practice them. There’s about 6 jazz jams in the city per month that are volunteer run. One of the principal tribulations of the Kelowna Jazz Society is the absence of a jazz venue in the city, so most of the playing in town is at the wineries, playing Fly Me to the Moon for dinner services and weddings, not the creative endeavor the Kelowna Jazz Society is after. The Rotary Center for the Arts runs two jazz shows a year, but those are for out of town acts, from Vancouver, Toronto, or from the USA.

    So this is the Orphaned Profession, a profession that was on the tip of the tongue of every jazz musician I spoke to, but without a home. While visiting I collaborated with many incredible musicians whom I would hire in a heart beat for gigs in Guelph, and who I could hire because they have the full kit of professional skills, and I know would represent me well on an off the band stand. This are people would be easy to work with too, because I know they get it. Nevertheless, in Kelwona this culture of professionalism has been orphaned from the profession its self.

    People can be professional, but they can’t do the profession.

    The Orphaned Profession

    Back in Guelph I had a jobbing gig at a near by University, lovely people, enthusiastic about their research, and they danced harder than their undergrad students. I know because I play for both crowds. And in Guelph I struggle to hire professional musicians…

    Music literacy is very low, low to the point where bands become seditious at the mention any band of reading charts, let alone this one. Often there’s only one person on each instrument who is capable of playing well enough for any given gig, so there’s little recourse if they make your life harder instead of easier. Being close to Toronto there’s a skill drain, where a lot of the players who are of a mind to play music professionally end up there for at least a few years, often decades.

    Compared to Kelowna, we’re pretty lucky! There are a couple places to play jazz shows, though we lack the tourism bucks. You can book La Poche which loves straight ahead jazz, there’s Silence Sounds which is your typical white-rectangular-prism arts space where anything goes, and then there’s Brothers Brewing which caters to the funk and indie side of things. Generally Guelph is pretty open minded and entrepreneurial in general though, I booked the Parade Band at a place that does bee keeping! You can get a gig here, try your hand on the open market!

    So it was on this regional university jobber gig where some where the only folks in town capable of doing the gig got into a fight. I won’t unpack it here, but getting into a fight on a gig is not very professional, unless you’re a boxer. These two combatants shared the equal but opposite personality flaw. One is chronically late, the other always very early and judgmental of those who arrive even on time. Neither are qualities I admire in a musician. The two fought all night which was not the highlight of my career.

    In their complaints they reached for the same criticism: lack of professionalism! They claimed that the cause of their woes was that the other did not act professionally. Presumably a “real” professional would make their own behavior a non-issue.

    In a town where the processes of acculturation have faltered there’s little recourse as a bandleader. I either have to say no to the job offer, “sorry, I don’t have the right people for this one”, or start a regional cultural organization to provide higher quality and more diverse opportunities to the next generation.

    In Guelph there is enough work for there to be a profession of music: there’s paying gigs, there’s lessons to teach, there’s festivals and charities to run; but there’s a flagging culture of professional musicianship. When the good paying gigs come around, I can spend the budget but I can’t always hire pros from town.

    How to Be a “Professional Bandleader”

    The context I am in might be entirely changed by the time the musician I’m mentoring comes into their own as a bandleader. That said I think there’s an evergreen lesson here for musicians of all stripes in probably all periods of time. If you can unpack your ambition, you can probably do the same for others. If you can understand the ambitions of the group, you’re well on your way to matching the skills, tools, and resources required to fulfill them.

    Rather than saying “professionalism is x, y, and z”, we have a broader interpretive category that acknowledges how little consensus you can expect to encounter. Being able to hold the interpersonal plurality to help your bandmates find paths towards edification is the real task.

    How can you combine the requirements of the gig, the needs of the audience, and the particulars of band to create a celebration of the human condition? It’s a big question, but life is the only game in town so you might as well have a go. If you make an honest effort and are willing to listen, learn, and grow then things will only get better. If they don’t you couldn’t have done more.

    Be willing to rewrite the rulebook, knowing that there’s no rulebook, so write the rulebook so you can start rewriting it. People can’t agree on the basics of the profession, so you’ll have to proceed without agreement. You’ll build your mandate as you go. The gate keepers have little power because the funding to maintain the gates has been cut, and the gate keeper is big into work-life balance these days.

    Every element of the gig is up for negotiation, so examine the elements! There’s lots of hidden discoveries to be made, and if you find some improvement communicate to your peers, they’ll be receptive if you bring them along. Most things are the way they are because they make some sense, but lots of other things could make sense too, and they can be the new way things are.

    A Professional Community

    When we endeavor to be bandleaders in 2026 we need to be flexible and reflexive community leaders. There’s so little structure remaining in the music business that, unless you’re working in a lawyered up AAA studio, you’re dealing with enthusiasts. These people know they could be making more money elsewhere, but are in music because they love it or think it’s important.

    You’re dealing with the beautiful swirling mess of people, their hopes and dreams, their needs and wants, their ambitions, and the inertia of all of the efforts of those who have preceded you. It’s a question of people’s belief in you. Is your work something they want to be a part of? You can use whatever skills and methods you can convincingly make the case for.

    You will put together your community of professionals who you can rely upon to do the work of music together. Like in any other community you will constantly be renegotiating the ways and means of collaborating and gathering. Circumstances will change and outside pressures will shift as the world keeps spinning around you, but by knowing your own goals and ideals you can keep finding yourself each time the map has to be redrawn.

    Being in a community of professional musicians is also a really cool place to be! You get to do something really unique, have the chance to share some of the heights of human experience with wonderful people, be a life long learner who grows endlessly, and see the benefit those skills have on the people and places you visit. Best of all if you build your community you’ll get to do it shoulder to shoulder with people good people, people who support you with deep empathy and awareness, inspire you and broaden your creative horizons, and flourish due to your influence and support. It’s well worth it!

    Good luck out there, it’s worth the effort.

  • Audience as Participant

    In many forms of music, the goal is to faithfully realize a composer’s vision or recreate a familiar recording. The audience is there to appreciate the quality of the performance.

    Jazz asks something different.

    Every jazz performance is a conversation that exists only in the present moment. The musicians listen closely to one another, responding in real time, shaping the music together. The audience is part of that conversation. Their attention, energy, silence, laughter, applause, and willingness to be surprised all become part of the performance itself.

    No two performances are the same because no two audiences are the same. A room full of engaged listeners encourages risk-taking, deep listening, and musical discovery. The result is something that could not have happened anywhere else, with anyone else.

    That doesn’t mean every audience has to egg the band on like a rowdy Cannonball Adderley club date, shouting for another chorus or daring the musicians to dig deeper. It can be just as powerful to fill a room with the almost haunted silence where thousands collaborate to be still, expressing their need with a lean forward.

    Those are different conversations, but they are conversations all the same. Would anything not qualify as a conversation? It’s harder to explain the negative, but most of us have had the misfortune of being at shows where the audience isn’t listening, or God forbid the band isn’t listening… I’m not sure which is worse. But the feeling is unmistakable and throws me out of a venue at a velocity of a cannon ball.

    If there’s a one-way mirror at the edge of the stage, where the musicians perform and the audience simply observes without participating, then for me, it isn’t really jazz. Jazz is something we make together, one moment at a time.

    In a healthy jazz community, the line between musician and audience is proud to the point of being the exception rather than the rule. People move between those roles constantly, not just from one concert to the next, but over the course of a single evening. Today’s listener might be tomorrow’s bandleader, next week’s volunteer, or the person sitting in at the jam. Just as often, the most important thing that happens at a gig isn’t on stage at all. It might be a burst of laughter that changes the mood of the room, or a challenge facing the city that precedes the evening’s performance by months.

    So bring your listening hat, and your stomping feet, and pack a story or two from your life to share. The gig won’t be the same without you.

  • Last Night We Marched

    Some things take time, and you never get them by rushing people. We’ve been at the Parade Band for just over a month now, and it had always been my hope that the band would shed the music stands and sprout legs and wander the lawns of Exhibition Park, and last night it finally happened.

    People were just ready to do it, we knew one song well enough, things were feeling light hearted and optimistic, the light was just right? Who knows? The details are not important. The details don’t get you a bunch of buddies goofing around in the park. You had to be there.

    But, we worked our way out of our little stand of trees into the sunlight and learned to take it first steps.

  • New Home, Same Project

    In the beginning of the Guelph Jazz Society’s web presence it shared real estate with with my personal website, www.theliamgallagher.com, but as time went on, more people were included in the project, and the Society matured, it became increasingly unsightly.

    It’ll take a little bit of time for the two things to part ways, and in some greater sense information technology wise, they’re still conjoined at the web server, but we’re our own thing now, independent from my personal professional ambitions. I’m very proud of these first years, what I’ve built, and the role I’ve played in breaking ground, but it’s time for things to be as they had anyways intended to be.

    So long the liam gallagher dot com, you were a good host.