Canadian Blues Royalty – Featuring 3-Juno Award-winning Artists
The blues, perhaps more than any other music, is jazz’s greatest influence. From the time when jazz evolved from the sounds of the Mississippi Delta a century ago right up to the modern jazz of today, the blues has been a benchmark for jazz musicians. But just what is the blues — a feeling, a kind of musical scale, a type of song, a particular chord progression, a poetic form, an attitude, a shared history, a “flatted fifth?” From its humble three-chord beginnings to the sophisticated harmonic progressions of today’s contemporary jazz musician, the blues is all of the above — and more!
So, what do you get when you put three of Canada’s greatest Blues guitar entertainers on one stage?
You get the Maximum Blues Revue!
An evening of exceptional Blues music from exceptional Blues artists including; Jack de Keyzer, Harrison Kennedy, and Rita Chiarelli.
Rita Chiarelli
Rita Chiarelli, Canada’s most highly acclaimed female roots and blues artist, with a JUNO award and 4 subsequent JUNO nominations, is known across Canada as the “Goddess of the Blues”. Chiarelli is a gifted songwriter and an entertaining performer, but it is her soaring 3 octave voice that sets her apart from her peers, inspires awe and often tears in her audiences, and causes critics to gush. “ a voice so blue it could make the angels weep”…. “a voice that can growl at her demons or soar with the angels, a gift for lyric, an ear for melody and the heart to combine them”.
Over the past decade Rita Chiarelli has won every major Canadian blues award, including multiple Maple Blues awards, Toronto Independent Music Awards, Hamilton Music Awards, Manitoba Blues Society and the Hamilton Blues Society’s Lifetime Achievement Awards. Most recently Rita was awarded the prestigious Maple Blues ‘Blues With A Feeling Award’ for Lifetime Achievement.
Harrison Kennedy
Harrison Kennedy is a Black Canadian electric blues R&B, and soul blues singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He is best known for being the lead vocalist on the Chairmen of the Board song, but has had a varied solo career since the mid-1970s. He was awarded the 2016 “Blues Album of the Year” Juno Award for his release, This Is From Here. It was Kennedy’s sixth nomination for that Award. He is also a Blues Music Award and multiple Maple Blues Award nominee.
Born and raised in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, His family had roots in New Orleans and Tennessee, and his uncle was the noted Canadian blues musician, Jackie Washington
Jack de Keyzer
Two time Juno winner, blues guitarist, singer, song writer Jack de Keyzer plays the blues world wide. His music has taken him from the Arctic Circle to Puerto Escondido, Mexico; from Athens, Greece to Hornby Island, BC and many points in between. One of Canada’s most awarded and in demand blues guitarists, Jack has released 9 CD’s and 1 DVD. An exciting live performer, soulful vocalist and world class song writer, de Keyzer performs an average of 150 shows per year and has brought audiences to their feet at many major Jazz and Blues Festivals including the Montreal Jazz Fest, Blues Sur Seine (France) The Ottawa Blues Festival and Puerto Blues, (Mexico). Much celebrated, de Keyzer has been nominated for the Juno (Blues Album) 5 times and won the Juno twice in 2003 and 2010. He has also won 7 Maple Blues Awards, (Canada’s national blues awards).