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Laila Biali

Laila Biali is an award-winning Canadian jazz singer, songwriter, pianist and, since 2017, CBC Radio 2, as radio host of Saturday Night Jazz. Her sound and style melds bright, contemporary jazz with modern and Great American songbook-era pop. 2011's Tracing Light was nominated for a Juno Award. She was the first ever double winner at SOCAN as keyboardist and singer of the year. She released three albums for Germany's ACT label, Laila Biali (2018), Out of Dust (2020), and Your Requests (2023). In 2024, Biali self-produced and released Wintersongs, an album of original seasonal songs, accompanied by Jane Bunnett, and the Venuti String Quartet. Biali began playing piano before she was five. She studied classical music and piano through elementary school through to graduating from the Royal Conservatory of Music. Studying at the school she developed a deep, abiding interest in jazz. At 19 she won scholarships to attend Toronto's Humber College. At 23, she released her debut album, Introducing the Laila Biali Trio. She won the CBC Galaxie Prize (Rising Star Award) at the National Jazz Awards. Two years later she won SOCAN Keyboardist of the Year and Composer of the Year at the National Jazz Awards. Biali moved to New York and took numerous solo gigs and formed her earliest trios. She took whatever gigs she could find, and given her abilities as both a vocalist and pianist, found work with the aforementioned musicians -- she met her husband, jazz drummer Ben Wittman -- on tour with Cole. She established a solid reputation among professionals and her own trio began getting some notice. Biali's second album From Sea to Sky was released by the CBC in 2007. She was hired by Sting as a backing vocalist for a series of American television appearances and was part of his band for the DVD-released concert A Winter's Night: Live from Durham Cathedral in 2009. Appearances with Botti, Vega, and others followed. Her album Tracing Light followed in 2010; it was her first release on her namesake label and was nominated for a Juno award. Biali's annual performances at Glenn Gould Hall became must-attend affairs. Her Live in Concert: Sold Out album from 2011 made the playlists of over 80 radio stations in North America. Biali continued her session work, but she also became a mother, so her trio's regular dates in New York and Toronto became her main musical focus. She also began writing her own songs for the first time. 2014's widely acclaimed House of Many Rooms was recorded with a quintet, orchestral horns, strings, and the Toronto Mass Choir. She not only wrote the tunes, she charted the arrangements as well. Biali is a member of the all-female New York-based neo-classical crossover quartet Rose & the Nightingale, whose members tour with Esperanza Spalding. On her own, touring and promoting the record continued unabated. Her performance at the 2016 TED Summit was filmed. In July of the following year she was a guest host on CBC's Radio 2 nightly jazz show, Tonic. In September she took over host of the station's Saturday Night Jazz program. All the while, Biali and her co-producer/drummer/husband Wittman were recording. In February she released Laila Biali; it was the first of three albums for Germany's ACT label, featuring nine originals -- including "Queen of Hearts" co-written with Randy Bachman -- and three covers: David Bowie's "Let's Dance," Coldplay's "Yellow," and Randy Newman's "I Think It’s Going to Rain Today." Its star-studded cast included trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire. She followed with 2020's Out of Dust, utilizing a larger studio cast that included a full horn section that included saxophonist John Ellis. In 2023 she returned with her third ACT date, Your Requests, after soliciting requests from her social media followers. Biali went through the list, picked ten standards, and put her inimitable arranging stamp on all of them. Recorded with her regular sextet, she also enlisted guest appearancers from Kurt Elling, Anat Cohen, Gregoire Maret, Emilie-Claire Barlow, and Caity Gyorgy. She followed in 2024 with Wintersongs, a nine-track collection offering quite space for reflection and meditations on the season. Her large group included Jane Bunnett and Sam Yahel. It's final cut, "Jesus, He Is Born," is credited to the 17th century Jesuit missionary, Jean de Brébeuf.
© Thom Jurek /TiVo
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