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Lauded Canadian pianist and composer
Renee Rosnes is a technically adept jazz improviser with a sound that is the epitome of post-bop sophistication. Inspired by players like
Oscar Peterson,
McCoy Tyner, and
Horace Silver,
Rosnes gained wider attention after moving to New York City in the 1980s, playing with
Joe Henderson,
Wayne Shorter, and
J.J. Johnson, and as a member of the
Carnegie Hall Jazz Band. From there, she embarked on a fruitful solo career, releasing several Juno Award-winning albums on the Blue Note label, including 1990's For the Moment and 2002's
Life on Earth. Along with her solo work,
Rosnes regularly appears with bassist
Ron Carter's quartet, is a founding member of the San Francisco Jazz Collective, and performs as musical director for the all-star ARTEMIS ensemble, the latter of whom released their debut album in 2020. In 2021, she delivered her third Smoke Sessions album, Kinds of Love.
Born in Regina, Saskatchewan, in 1962,
Rosnes began playing classical piano at age three, and was bitten by the jazz bug in her teens after a high school music teacher recruited her for the jazz band. She attended the University of Toronto for two years to study classical performance, but left to go back home to Vancouver and begin playing jazz full-time, because she knew where her heart lay and what she wanted to do professionally. The early-'80s jazz club scene in Vancouver was a vibrant, healthy one, and she had the opportunity to sit in with and learn from many American and Canadian jazz masters, among them
Sarah Vaughan,
Oscar Peterson,
Ella Fitzgerald, and
Toshiko Akiyoshi. At an after-hours jazz club, she sat in with renowned artists including
Freddie Hubbard,
Wynton and
Branford Marsalis, and
Woody Shaw.
After receiving a Canada Council for the Arts grant in 1986,
Rosnes moved to New York City. She'd made a lot of friends from New York in her time at the Vancouver after-hours club, so it wasn't as if she were stepping into alien territory. Within a couple of years, she was getting calls from the right people, and she received her first big break when recruited by tenor saxophonist
Joe Henderson to be part of his quartet. Later in the '80s, she joined the small groups of saxophonist
Wayne Shorter and trombonist
J.J. Johnson, and began to showcase her skills as part of
the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band under the direction of trumpeter
Jon Faddis.
Rosnes has also performed with
the Gerald Wilson Orchestra,
the Danish Radio Big Band, and
the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Tribute Band.
She began her long association with Blue Note Records in 1990, with nine critically praised Blue Note albums garnering four Juno Awards and several Canadian National Jazz Awards. Her Blue Note releases include her self-titled debut in 1990 followed by For the Moment (1990), Without Words (1992),
Ancestors (1996),
As We Are Now (1997),
Art & Soul (1999),
With a Little Help from My Friends (2001),
Life on Earth (2002), and Renee Rosnes with the Danish Radio Big Band (2003). To be sure, one of
Rosnes' finest efforts in the '90s was her
Life on Earth album, which fused the Indigenous musics of India, Senegal, Indonesia, and Brazil with her own jazz piano stylings.
Rosnes' ensembles have included such musicians as drummers
Billy Drummond (her ex-husband),
Lewis Nash, and
Bill Stewart; saxophonists
Walt Weiskopf and
Rich Perry; vibraphonist
Steve Nelson; and bassist
Peter Washington.
Rosnes has also frequently performed with vibraphonist
Bobby Hutcherson and is an original member of
the SF Jazz Collective, an all-star octet. Her recordings during the 21st century include 2005's A Time for Love, a trio date with drummer
Nash and bassist
Washington on the Japanese Video Arts label;
Nash and
Washington returned to accompany
Rosnes on her 2008 tribute to
Joe Henderson, Black Narcissus on Pony Canyon (also Japan). In 2010,
Rosnes was back on Blue Note with
Double Portrait, a piano duet recording with her husband,
Bill Charlap, and that same year saw the release of Manhattan Rain, a recording on Pony Canyon featuring the pianist in settings ranging from trio to quintet.
Over the next several years,
Rosnes appeared on records by such artists as
Michael Dease,
Renée Fleming,
Jimmy Greene, and
Tony Bennett. In 2016, she delivered
Written in the Rocks, her first album of all-original compositions inspired by the coastal landscape of her native British Columbia. Well received, it took home the Juno Award for Jazz Album of the Year: Solo.
Beloved of the Sky, a live album recorded at New York's Smoke Club, followed in 2018. It featured the pianist's quintet with saxophonist
Chris Potter, vibraphonist
Steve Nelson, bassist
Peter Washington, and drummer
Lenny White.
ARTEMIS, the debut album from the jazz supergroup of the same name arrived in 2020 and found
Rosnes leading the ensemble alongside clarinetist
Anat Cohen, tenor saxophonist
Melissa Aldana, trumpeter
Ingrid Jensen, bassist
Noriko Ueda, drummer
Allison Miller, and vocalist
Cécile McLorin Salvant. The following year, she returned to her own small group work with the Smoke Session Kinds of Love, which featured saxophonist
Chris Potter, bassist
Christian McBride, drummer
Carl Allen, and percussionist
Rogério Boccato. ~ Matt Collar & Richard Skelly