Trillium Jazz - Goodtime Jazz for Your Special Event!

GUELPH

Bill Urban, clarinet player & leader of the band, was born in Pittsburgh, Pa. where he studied painting.  After a few years in Venezuela, he moved to Muskoka where he and Marguerite founded Night Train and Trillium Jazz Band.  He now occupies himself as a visual artist. Artwork

Marguerite Urban was born in the heart of dixieland in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Marguerite plays banjo and tenor guitar and also manages the band.   Both she and Bill played in  Night Train during the 1970s and 1980s.   She is the former C.E.O. of Huntsville Public Library

Besides founding and performing with the Emperor Quartet,
Jef ten Kortenaar (violin) teaches violin at St. Michael's Choir School and conducts string orchestras at the Guelph Youth Music Centre and the Royal Conservatory of Music. He is also active as an arranger and a lecturer. He has worked as a broadcaster for the CBC presenting programmes on Mozart and on music of the British Monarchy.

MUSKOKA

Richard William Lawrence Faye  (you might know him as Rick Faye) on drums is a graduate of the Ontario Collesge Of Percussion.  He studied harmony, arranging and composition with the renowned Gordon Delamont in the 70s.  Rick has 30 years'  experience  as bandleader and sideman in almost all styles of music including musical theater, big band, rock and various jazz styles.    His credits include a Juno award nomination and Gold Record as writer,  producer,   performer in Best Children's Music category .

Ted Richardson, trumpet, started coming to Muskoka when he was 18 years old to work at Britannia Hotel where he eventually joined and then led the hotel house band. Ted is a retired public school principal who lives in Uxbridge, Ont. and has played with numerous bands in the Toronto area, including Gid Rowntree's Swing Band and the Swing Shift Big Band.

Jack Hutton, long-time piano player for Toronto's Rainbow-Gardens Jazz Orchestra, now lives in Bala, Muskoka  and joins the band from time to time.   He has been performing and researching ragtime and popular music for more than 30 years.    Jack currently enjoys playing for visitors at Bala's Museum  which he and Linda founded in 1992, with Memories of Lucy Maud Montgomery. In 1997, Jack received the Pauline McGibbon Life Achievement in the Arts award at Roy Thompson Hall.  One of Jack's recent CDs,"The World is Waiting for the Sunrise," is a tribute to that  Canadian-written  tune and  its two composers,  Ernest Seitz and  Gene Lockart.  A book on the same  theme will be launched the first week of May at the Grand International Ragtime/Jasstime Festival in Alexandria Bay, N.Y.

Versatile musician, composer, arranger and recording artist Marion Linton studied Jazz Composition & Arranging as well as Violin at York University. Following university years, Marion performed original vocal arrangements with Toronto's Union Station, an a cappella jazz sextet. She played piano with Pat Wheeler's jazz group, also specializing in original compositions.  Marion's versatility on violin is legendary in recording circles around Ontario, equally at home with bluegrass, swing, country, jazz and Celtic. You can hear her on Emory Lester Set, Big Gravel, Heartbreak Hill, Beth Ferguson's Inside Talking, and with Glen Reid

Louis Tusz came to Huntsville to after graduating from the University of Western Ontario in Music Education where he was a vocal music major.  He now heads the Arts Department at Huntsville High School.  Louis's original vocals and hot bass choruses are one of the band's strongest features.

John Minnis holds a music degree from the University of Western Ontario and brings with him nearly 30 years of professional music experience. As one of the original performers in the Deerhurst Inn “Vegas” show in Huntsville, he spent a number of years in Muskoka before returning to the “big city” and working as a freelance musician in the GTA and  as an instrumental music instructor with the Toronto District School Board.  John returned to Huntsville in 2003 and is now an elementary school teacher in Bracebridge, plays trombone with the Trilliums, and plies his trade as a trumpet/keyboard/guitar player in the Muskoka area.  A versatile musician, John  performs everything from quiet jazz to “Rock on the Dock.”

Emsdale, Ontario native Steve Marshall  has played bass, guitar and mandolin with bands in the Muskoka-Parry Sound area for more than 20 years, including stints with Dave Essig, Blue Moon, Duck Brothers, Glen Reid and Scotia Junction.  He has recorded with Glen Reid and Dave Essig.