J. Gary Sill

J. GARY SILL Performer • Composer • Arranger • Teacher • Producer Jelaluddin Gary Sill has performed across Canada. He has been a piano coach and instructor, an analog and electronic composer, and has written extensively for film, television, and the theatre. Gary is highly accomplished in jazz and pop idioms, but he is best known for his extraordinary improvisational skills. In the past twenty years, he has released numerous recordings of improvised and composed music. Biography and Education Canadian pianist and composer J. Gary Sill was born to a band leader father and a journalist mother in the small town of Fort Macleod, Alberta, on September 28, 1944. He has been a musician, composer, and teacher in Banff, Calgary, and Edmonton, and now lives with his wife, Carole Harmon, in the Canadian West Coast city of Vancouver, British Columbia, where he records and produces music in his custom-designed studio. Through the Banff Centre for the Arts, Gary has worked or studied with: • Steve Reich, John Cage, R. Murray Schaffer, Oscar Peterson, Carl Berger, Ursula Oppens, and other influential contemporary composers. • Stephen Temmer (audio engineering) and Gene Youngblood (future of electronic media). Music Studies at The University of Calgary: • Composition with Luigi Zaninelli and piano with Gloria Saarinen. • Electronic music with Dr. Stan Finn. • Film history with Miroslav Malik (Czech pioneer of holography in art). Private study included music theory with Gordon Delamont, Native Indian culture with Abe Burnstick, and improvisational acting with Keith Johnstone (University of Alberta). Instructor at Grant MacEwan College (Jazz Program): • Piano, ensemble performance, music theory, sight-singing and ear training, vocal accompaniment. • Summer of 2013, performed and recorded with the Cunningham Family Band during the production of “The Cunningham Family Métis Music Project”. Teachers and Instructors Sill counts as important influences Sufi teachers and guides, including Shamcher Bryn Beorse and the French Sufi composer Hidayat Inayat-Khan, whose forty-year friendship has deepened and directed his understanding and practice of music. Since 1985, Gary has been assisting Hidayat Inayat-Khan as a performer, producer, and engineer of both formal music projects and compositions to accompany spiritual practices. He has assisted in the distribution of these projects and, in 2007, with his wife, Carole Harmon, organized the Mysticism of Sound Conference and Concert Series (MOSC) and served as its Communications and Music Director. Composing, Producing and Arranging Some Music Production Highlights • Film score for a National Film Board documentary on CBC Radio, as well as "Minister of Everything", a documentary dealing with the life of the influential Canadian politician, C. D. Howe, both directed by Robert Duncan. • Produced, performed, and arranged CD recordings for Vancouver singers Maria Miceli, Pam Henry, and Jerry DesVoignes. Theatre • Co-wrote "The Inner Call", a music theatre production, with William Pasnak. The work was performed in the spring of 1992. • Composer for the stage adaptation of Jan Truss’ “Jasmine”. • Composer for One Yellow Rabbit Theatre Company and for Theatre Calgary. • Music director for “Jacques Brel Cabaret” (Jasper Players Theatre). Recordings Released piano and orchestrated CDs: "Night Vision" (2010), "Golden Highway" (2008), "Stonehenge Is Burning" (2007), “Restless Hearts” (2002), “Spring Is In The Poet” (2001), “Healing Moon” (2000), Wire (2018) Produced and performed for PacificLine, Vancouver, Music for Relaxation Series: "Pachelbel’s Canon in D", "Bach", "Beethoven", "Fauré & Saint-Saëns", "Albinoni & Hayden", "Satie, variations on 3 Gymnopédies".

Piano