Aaron Jensen is an award-winning Toronto-based composer, producer, performer, and clinician. His creative works have been performed and recorded by several JUNO/GRAMMY award-winning artists (Randy Brecker, Mariah Carey, Natalie MacMaster, Bobby McFerrin, Evelyn Glennie, Ron Sexsmith, Heather Rankin, Cindy Cashdollar, and others); by celebrated choirs, such as the Elora Festival Singers (CANADA), Zvonky Praha (CZECHIA), The Swingles (U.K.), and Voices of Namibia (NAMIBIA); and by symphony orchestras including the TUCCA Philharmonic (BRAZIL), Orchestra Teatro Puccini, (ITALY) and Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg (FRANCE).

Jensen had the pleasure of acting as musical director, music producer, band leader, and composer for the nine-time Emmy award winning, Schitt's Creek. His musical services have been called on for recording projects by Andrea Bocelli, Kevin Hearn, Bob Ezrin, and Barack and Michelle Obama. Aaron has contributed to platinum-selling, GRAMMY/JUNO award-nominated albums, and has received several international CARA awards and nominations for his original music. Jensen has twice been recognized by the International John Lennon Songwriting Competition, including a grand prize win for Best Jazz Composition. He has been enlisted as a musical director/content creator for companies including Chapters/Indigo, Zoomer Media, 20th Century Fox, Cineplex, Major League Baseball, The Greater Toronto Airport Authority, and Entertainment One. Aaron’s passion for the theatre has been recently displayed in his mini-musical, The Trial of Bastiano di Balogna, which was produced by the New York City musical theatre podcast, Bite-Sized Broadway - airing in early 2021.

Since completing his studies in music composition at York University in 2006, Aaron has toured and recorded with the award-winning groups Cadence, Countermeasure, Retrocity, and The Watch. His love of vocal music, obsession with language, and passion for interweaving musical genres can be heard throughout his body of work. Jensen is the Artistic and Musical Director of Countermeasure, the Artist-in-Residence at Beth Sholom Synagogue,  an Associate Composer of the CMC, a recent Composer-in-Residence of the Canadian Men's Chorus, and the Artistic Director Emeritus of SING! The Toronto Vocal Arts Festival.

Twenty-seven years. Four bandmates. Two brothers. One album. Let It Lie, the debut release from Canadian roots-rockers the Bros. Landreth, is proof that there's strength in numbers.

Anchored by the bluesy wail of electric guitars, the swell of B3 organ, and the harmonized swoon of two voices that were born to mesh. At first listen, you might call it Americana. Dig deeper, though, and you'll hear the nuances that separate The Bros. Landreth — whose members didn't grow up in the American south, but rather the isolated prairie city of Winnipeg, Manitoba — from their folksy friends in the Lower 48. Where does the sound come from? Maybe it's in their blood. After all, long before they made music together, siblings David and Joey Landreth attended their father's bar gigs as babies. "Mom would take us in the basinet and stick us under the bar tables, and we'd fall asleep," says David. "Dad was a working musician who backed up people like Amos Garrett, but his love was always songwriting. He'd play three or four sets at those bars, so we'd be at the gigs all night." 

"We were always around music," adds Joey, the group's frontman and chief songwriter. "We had no choice! We were baptized into it." As the boys got older, they began paying attention to the records their parents would play in the small, WWII-era shack that doubled as the family's home. Bonnie Raitt, Ry Cooder and Little Feat all received plenty of airtime, with John Hiatt's Bring the Family and Lyle Lovett's Pontiac standing out as family favorites. The siblings absorbed those records, which spun tales of love, life and lust in the Bible Belt. Years later — after Joey and David had given up their gigs as sidemen to form their own group, with drummer Ryan Voth — the Bros. Landreth began drawing on that familiar sound, mixing the rootsy swirl of Americana with the bandmates' own experiences up north.

Let It Lie was recorded in a straw bale house in southern Manitoba, during one of the coldest winters in recent memory. Working with producer Murray Pulver, the Bros. Landreth found warmth in the songs that Joey and David had written at home, brewing up an earthy, earnest sound that has since drawn comparisons to the Eagles, the Allman Brothers and Jackson Browne. Eager to tip their hat to the man who gave the Landreth siblings their very first instruments, the band also recorded a version of "I am the Fool," a song originally written by the boys' father, renowned Winnipeg musician Wally Landreth. Wally even stopped by the studio to sing a verse on "Runaway Train," a scuzzy, fuzzy rock song that mixes boogie-woogie guitars with two generations of bluesy, booming Landreth vocals. "He slayed it," says Joey, who laughs at the memory of duetting with his father in the recording studio. "It was fun, for the first time in my life, to get to tell my Dad what to do."

Album highlights like "Our Love," "Firecracker" and Nothing" were all inspired by a string of rocky relationships, but Lie It Lie is more than a breakup album. Filled with mid-tempo rockers, butter-smooth ballads and cowboy lullabies, it's the sort of album that finds inspiration not only in the landscape of the human heart, but also the windswept prairies that stretch for hours on every side of Winnipeg's city limits. The music is steeped in the history and heritage of the band's hometown, and if it sounds wintry at times, that doesn't mean it's not downright lovely.

That hometown was quick to embrace the Bros. Landreth, with the Winnipeg Free Press applauding the band's "blues rock [songs] resplendent with soulful harmonies as golden and warm as the late evening sun." Meanwhile, the band began hitting the road in 2013, traveling the heartlands and highways that helped inspire their songs in the first place. They didn't limit their focus to Canada, either. During the summer of 2014, the Bros. Landreth signed a deal with Slate Creek Records, an American label whose roster includes singer/songwriter Brandy Clark and Pistol Annies member Angaleena Presley.

"I remember the moment Dave and I started singing together," Joey remembers, "and I realized how similar we sounded. It was a bit of an 'a-ha' moment for us. We were both pretty burnt out from our sideman jobs and wanted to make some music together, just for fun. The band built itself after that. I was just standing there, watching the walls go up."

"Joey taught me how to sing," David adds. "Prior to the band getting started, there were 3 or 4 years where we really didn't spend much time together, because we were touring with other groups. We'd always been really close as teenagers. With the Bros. Landreth, I feel like it's almost a divine interception. We were supposed to come back together and make this music."

Kiva is a Canadian professional overtone singer, known internationally as a pioneer in the field, bringing the art form into the realm of pop, jazz, world beat/experimental/ alt singer songwriter genres. She has directed the overtone choir AURALIA, composing or arranging all the repertoire. She teaches overtone singing online with a video course. There are 3 solo CDs. Currently performing with The Unglüd, an improv collective, with throat singing, beat boxing, 
overtone singing, didgeridoo, soprano sax, button accordion, electronics and hurdy gurdy.

WRITE PLAY SING
I live in Toronto. My relatives are from Ireland (via Trinidad) and French Canadian explorers. Not related to Liam, Noel, Rory or Bronagh (I wish). My forte is writing lyrics. To me, there is a story, a movement, a movie in every song. I tend towards the jazzy or dissonant side and my topics are all over the place. I will get inspiration from Facebook shorts, books, movies, other songs, news reports, conversations and personal experiences (careful being a songwriter’s friend😎). My inspirations are Joni, Leonard, Tom W, David Bowie, Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, Pattie Smith, Bob D. Who do I end up sounding like, through no fault but my own: Biff Rose, Paul Williams, Feist, Roger Nichols, Bo Durham. So listen and decide for yourself.

Be connected with the first Community Center for Overtone Music dedicated to the sound and tunes of the harmonic series, partials and overtones 


Singer/songwriter/guitarist extraordinaire Cara Luft is that rare artist steeped in folk and traditional roots music almost from birth yet willing to alter that fabric, stretch the boundaries, not afraid to bend genres, styles and integrate what others might regard as a disparate set of influences.  Born into a folk musical family in Calgary (Canada), Cara played with dulcimers and autoharps while her peers played with Barbies and Nintendo.  Currently based in Winnipeg, Cara has become a widely-respected and well-traveled member of the Canadian folk/roots music community.  She has wowed audiences and critics with her solo performances across North America and Europe since leaving folk trio The Wailin' Jennys.  There's nothing pretentious about Cara, she's the real deal.  And that sense of honesty, integrity, personality and spontaneity permeates and resonates throughout both her music and her live performances.  Reviewers and fans alike are eagerly awaiting the release of her upcoming new solo album, Darlingford, in 2012. The album was recorded in old churches, living rooms and home studios across Canada during 2011, and includes an all-star cast of guest musicians. The project once again captures Cara’s prowess as a songwriter, singer and instrumentalist.  Leave it to Canadian music elder statesman Terry David Mulligan to sum it up best: “This is her time... Make room in your musical world for Cara Luft before she kicks your door down!” 

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