2026 Ottawa Jazz Festival — Thursday, June 25

Thursday, June 25, 2026 Lineup

Daily lineup at Confederation Park. Headliner: DOMi & JD Beck on OLG Main Stage.

OLG Main Stage (Confederation Park)

6:30 pm — Mark Ferguson Quartet

• Mark Ferguson - piano
• Ben Di Millo - guitar
• JP Lapensée - bass
• Jamie Holmes - drums

Mark Ferguson is an accomplished jazz pianist, composer, arranger, producer and music educator.

He has had the privilege of performing with legendary artists including Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Gil Evans, Nelson Riddle, Dionne Warwick, Natalie Cole, Rob McConnell and the Boss Brass, Holly Cole and Manteca.

Mark’s new release on PSP records, “Transformation” features Ben Di Millo (guitar), JP Lapensée (Bass) and Jamie Holmes (drums).

8:30 pm — DOMi & JD Beck 🎤 headliner

If you were to visit the website of DOMi & JD BECK—the astoundingly virtuosic Gen-Z jazz duo—you’d be told a dubious story about a 12-year-old saxophonist/physicist (DOMi Louna) and a 6-year-old sheep investigator/physicist (JD Beck). Let’s fix that. “My philosophy of life is don’t take shit too seriously,” says DOMi Louna, born Domitille Degalle. And that’s fair. But the vibrant world she and her collaborator have given us demands exploration. DOMi & JD BECK’s music finds both humor and greatness in harmonic complexity, rhythmic shiftiness, and speed. She favors sounds that evoke ‘70s jazz fusion and the colorful blips of 2000s Pokémon soundtracks, while he tunes and plays his snare in ways that can sound electronic, channeling IDM and boom bap. Sometimes they’re stuffed into a bathroom and sometimes the drums are muffled by pretzels stacked on the hi-hat, or toilet paper tossed on the snare. Their acclaimed debut album—NOT TiGHT, released by Anderson .Paak’s new label APESHIT in partnership with the legendary jazz label Blue Note Records—is an attempt to bottle their goofy magic. They offer winking breaks and gleeful pivots, but the album is more composed than anything they’ve done before, toying with pop structures and pretty restraint. That befits their origin story. The duo first played together in a room full of blaring demos at a trade show, but they bonded over gauche keyboard FX and mom jokes. Over the next year and a half, they wrote and recorded much of NOT TiGHT at JD’s house in Dallas on drums and a 49-key MIDI board with just a few mics. The album—which earned them two GRAMMY nominations including Best New Artist—features the likes of Thundercat, whose deadpan funk is their closest antecedent, Herbie Hancock, Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes, Mac DeMarco, Kurt Rosenwinkel, and .Paak himself. The duo has since performed an unforgettable NPR Tiny Desk Concert, made national TV appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel Live, and been featured in the line-ups of music festivals across the world from Coachella to the North Sea Jazz Festival. Along the way, DOMi & JD BECK have sat in with Hancock and backed Thundercat, Ariana Grande, Eric André, and more; they also co-wrote “Skate” on .Paak’s GRAMMY-winning album with Bruno Mars as Silk Sonic.

Azrieli Studio (National Arts Centre)

7:00 pm — Avishai Cohen Big Vicious

Avishai Cohen is globally recognized as a musician with an individual sound and a questing spirit, an ever-creative player-composer open to multiple strains of jazz and active as a leader, co-leader, and sideman. Aside from the acclaimed work with his quartet over the last several years, and previously his trio work under the moniker Triveni, the trumpeter has also recorded and toured the world as part of the Mark Turner Quartet, the SFJAZZ Collective, Jazz100, Zakir Hussain, and the 3 Cohens Sextet – with his sister, clarinetist-saxophonist Anat, and brother, saxophonist Yuval.

In 2024, Cohen released his newest album, Ashes to Gold, a deeply introspective and richly textured exploration of life’s transitions and renewal, was written after the tragic events of Oct. 7th, 2023. The title comes from the Japanese concept of Kintsugi (transformation through repair) where the process of repair doesn't aim to restore the item to its original state but transform it into a new creation with its own unique identity. The album showcases Cohen’s ability to blend lyrical beauty with technical brilliance, further solidifying his reputation as a boundary-pushing innovator in contemporary jazz.

Named as the Artistic Director of the International Jerusalem Festival, Cohen has also been voted a Rising Star on three consecutive occasions in the DownBeat Critics Poll.

9:00 pm — Avishai Cohen Big Vicious

Avishai Cohen is globally recognized as a musician with an individual sound and a questing spirit, an ever-creative player-composer open to multiple strains of jazz and active as a leader, co-leader, and sideman. Aside from the acclaimed work with his quartet over the last several years, and previously his trio work under the moniker Triveni, the trumpeter has also recorded and toured the world as part of the Mark Turner Quartet, the SFJAZZ Collective, Jazz100, Zakir Hussain, and the 3 Cohens Sextet – with his sister, clarinetist-saxophonist Anat, and brother, saxophonist Yuval.

In 2024, Cohen released his newest album, Ashes to Gold, a deeply introspective and richly textured exploration of life’s transitions and renewal, was written after the tragic events of Oct. 7th, 2023. The title comes from the Japanese concept of Kintsugi (transformation through repair) where the process of repair doesn't aim to restore the item to its original state but transform it into a new creation with its own unique identity. The album showcases Cohen’s ability to blend lyrical beauty with technical brilliance, further solidifying his reputation as a boundary-pushing innovator in contemporary jazz.

Named as the Artistic Director of the International Jerusalem Festival, Cohen has also been voted a Rising Star on three consecutive occasions in the DownBeat Critics Poll.

Elgin St. Stage (Confederation Park)

7:30 pm — Nick Schofield

• Nick Schofield - drums
• Linsey Wellman - saxophone
• Yolande Laroche - keyboard

Nick Schofield is a Canadian musician, producer and ambassador of ambient music. He’s been dubbed a "dazzling electronic artist" by Aquarium Drunkard and "synth maven" by Constellation Records. Nick’s new album Blue Hour explores ambient-jazz and features Scott Bevins on trumpet – it's perfect for fans of Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way.

Over the years, Nick has received glowing press from Bandcamp Daily, the Guardian and BBC. On stage, he has performed at Place des Arts in Montreal, National Sawdust in New York City and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, opening for acclaimed artists like Angel Olsen, Hauschka and Colin Stetson.

Nick has a BFA in Electroacoustics from Concordia University and works as the technical director with artist-run centre SAW and Debaser's Pique festival in Ottawa.

10:30 pm — The Free Label

The Free Label is a six-member band from Toronto, Canada, blending 70s disco, 90s R&B, and high-energy funk into an electrifying, dance-driven experience. Their 2019 single "All Night" led to international tours across Europe, North America, and Australia, gaining a loyal following.

They’ve played major Canadian festivals, including Mariposa Folk Festival and the Calgary Stampede, and opened for T-Pain, Aqua, and Lupe Fiasco. The band has also toured the U.S., opening for various artists and performing at universities across the country.

In 2024, Songs for Sienna, their highly anticipated album, earned them a spot on the Amazon Music Billboard in Dundas Square, Toronto. Tracks like "Crimes of Passion" have gained global attention.

With over 15 million views of their live performances in the last year, The Free Label’s energetic shows and natural chemistry continue to captivate audiences worldwide.

Fourth Stage (National Arts Centre)

6:30 pm — Brittany Davis & Black Thunder

Black Thunder is the dazzling, fully improvised, fully realized new album by Seattle-based musician, producer, and engineer BRITTANY DAVIS. Featuring the artist on keys and vocals, Evan Flory-Barnes on bass, and D’Vonne Lewis on drums, the Josh Evans-produced offering recalls artists like Nina Simone, Roberta Flack, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk in its immersive, incantatory spirit.

The trio — who barely knew each other previously — extemporized Black Thunder in a surge of interactive creativity across two days in the studio. The pressure-cooker environment did away with overthinking and brought each musician’s A-game. Steeped in Black and Afrocentric cultural influences, this is Davis’s most poignant and cathartic work to date.

“Brittany, Evan, and D’Vonne have, in some way, been preparing for this recording all their lives. Honing their instrumental craft and ability, of course — but more importantly, preparing their ears, emotions, and egos to be fully present and create absolutely in the moment,” Evans says. “To listen deeply and respond empathetically. To speak with uncomfortable honesty. To listen, and be vulnerable.”

Black Thunder marks a shift away from the drum machines and programmed keys of her previous album, 2024’s Image Issues. This is a fully live, organic performance, one that showcases her stylistic maturation and the breadth of her versatility.

In the opening piece, “All You Get,” Davis introduces herself on the piano with a pensive, one-note octave rhythm; Flory-Barnes joins them with a hypnotic pulse. Lewis completes the triangulation with a shaker, then drums. “The groove is locked in,” Evans says with a smile. “The ceremony has begun.”

At the outset, Davis scats a melodic phrase. But moans, chants, claps, and snaps bring the group heads somewhere else entirely — somewhere deep-set, primed for catharsis. To the notion that “You get what you get/ And don’t throw a fit,” Davis hurls, “I’ll show you what I get/ I’ll show you I’ve evolved past all your s— / My evolution has not become flat!”

“She is channeling something or someone else,” the producer adds. “Voices, spirits, the divine — something bigger than the room itself. Something more than just the three musicians playing — something older, something deeper.”

“So many things I’ve never seen / but I’ve touched it all, it seems,” Davis sings in “Amid the Blackout of the Night.” She’s never seen the stars; she’s never seen the sun nor moon; she’s never seen the night. “But how can she somehow still perfectly capture that feeling of looking up into the night sky?” Evans says. “Is there more to seeing than just sight?”

From celestial concerns, Davis pivots to terra firma: the swaggering title track, “Black Thunder,” evokes soil, rain, mountaintops, earthquakes. On “Change Me,” Davis and Flory-Barnes hot-potato a fragmented scale between piano and bass: “Can’t be like this/ Too Black, too fat, and blind all at the same time,” sings a self-disassembling Davis.

“Brit is vulnerable and flawed, and maybe tired of being some kind of griot or action hero,” Evans says. “The stars are beautiful, but sometimes Brit just wants to be skinny and ‘attractive.’ It takes bravery to share that.”

As with the rest of Black Thunder, the spoken-word “Girl (Don’t You Know)” was improvised — albeit massaged and collaged with studio trickery. “It started out as a six-minute, spoken-word freestyle; Brit and I took that piece, chopped it up, and layered it upon itself,” Evans says. The anxious dance of “Girl (Now We’re the Same)” settles into a crepuscular mood.

Within the freestyling “Mirrors,” Davis pits their self-perception against that from outside. “Sarah’s Song” channels an enslaved woman — abused, ignored, forgotten, who had 24 children. The sounds of chains and padlocks evoke the weight of ancestral pain.

After the light-and-dark, push-and-pull “Sun and Moon,” Black Thunder concludes with “…Ancestors.” Apropos to the title, “Brit told me that at different times she felt like the voices of their ancestors were speaking through her,” Evans remembers. “We decided to summon and channel these voices, to connect and comment on the songs, almost like a Greek choir.”

Black Thunder may contain a throng of voices, but they coalesce into one — that of a sui generis artist charting a course all her own. By bulldozing easy narratives and accessing the realm of pure feeling, Davis’ latest missive is a creative thunderclap that will be impossible to unhear.

9:00 pm — Norma Winstone with the Atlantic Jazz Collective

• Norma Winstone - vocals
• Mike Murley - tenor sax
• Florian Hoefner - piano
• Jim Vivian - bass
• Nick Fraser - drums

The Atlantic Jazz Collective is a group of 3 JUNO award-winning artists from Canada’s Atlantic Region. Saxophonist Mike Murley and bassist Jim Vivian are veterans of the Canadian jazz scene and recently returned home to Halifax, NS (Murley) and St. John’s, NL (Vivian) after decades of living in Toronto. Pianist Florian Hoefner moved to St. John’s from New York City in 2014 and now serves as Assistant Professor of Jazz Studies at Memorial University. Born out of the Atlantic Jazz Nights concert series at the Arts and Culture Centre in St. John’s, the Atlantic Jazz Collective’s mission is to develop and promote jazz in Atlantic Canada and beyond through exciting international collaborations.

The group presents their debut album “Seascape (Alma Records, May 2025) that features revered UK-based vocalist, Norma Winstone. Winstone has participated in iconic recordings that have shaped the direction of modern jazz and have set standards for vocal recordings. She was featured as vocalist and lyricist on Wheeler’s influential Music for Large and Small Ensemble (1990, ECM Records). Her 1987 ECM album, Somewhere Called Home was described as “one most original yet idyllic of vocal jazz recordings” by Allmusic. The ensemble will be completed by one of the outstanding drummers of the Canadian scene, Ottawa native, Nick Fraser.

The repertoire includes reimagined versions of pieces by Maria Schneider, Kenny Wheeler, John Taylor, Ralph Towner, Steve Swallow and others. A brilliant wordsmith whose timeless, poetic lyrics have set the standard for the contemporary jazz art song, Winstone has written original lyrics to these previously instrumental pieces.